Today I’m sharing another garden tour with you. I can’t believe how much everything has grown since the last video.
I filmed this video last week and since then we’ve done our first canning of greenbeans, eaten our first ripe tomatoes, and harvested our first mess of okra.
In the first garden tour it had rained all week and in this video I’m wishing it would rain! Such is the life of a gardener I guess 🙂
I hope you enjoyed the garden tour!
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Your garden is stunning. I can only imagine how much effort and experimentation has occurred over the years to create what you have now. I’m growing a few vegetables in buckets and it is thrilling to pick what I’ve grown and then turn it into dinner. I’d be over the moon with a garden such as yours.
I loved seeing your garden. The Lord has blessed us with another successful growing season.
I have cucumbers growing on a re-purposed cemetery wreath holder just like yours in the video. It is supporting vines and cukes. You have a lovely garden.
Love your garden. Boy it has grown from last time. Looks so good. I’m ot going to get to canned this year cause where I broke my wrist. Taken longer to heal. I sure miss canning my tomatoes and putting up corn and beans.
My family has lived Appalachia (northeast Tennessee) for 250 years. If you know anything about the weather here, we have a lot of dry spells. We have been going through one now, even the weeds are dying. It’s rained a lot today, the first good rain we have had in 2 months and I’m thankful.
Love your garden. Boy it has grown from last time. Looks so good. I’m ot going to get to canned this year cause where I broke my wrist. Taken longer to heal. I sure miss canning my tomatoes and putting up corn and beans. Miss it so much.
I enjoyed this so much! You make me think of myself–I always try to discover the first babies! We are having a ton of cucumbers and yellow squash. For some reason, we never do well with zucchini but we have had a few. I’ve canned one batch of green beans and may try to pick this afternoon. Tomatoes not doing well at all–they’ve got some kind of disease we keep treating so maybe they’ll pull out. We have the chocolate cherries on our fence–they are huge and I’m getting the first ones for myself. Okra is getting huge and I am pruning it back hard as I saw a man doing on you tube. Hope I can harvest without much pain–I bought me a pair of elbow length gloves too!!
There is so much joy & hope in raising a garden–I often think of the hymn especially early season before it gets so hot I’m more likely to think about the flames of h*ll. It’s nearly a 100 here in TN.
Tipper,
I loved the garden tour and as Mama use to say, if she was still alive, “she talks like a true Southerner does , nice and Flat.” …Ken
Beautiful Garden!
Creek has gone dry again here – last time it went dry was the drought of 2011.
No cattle in the pasture now but if there were we’d probably lose them in the cracks in the ground!
We have a few tomatoes and bell peppers but with temps up to 106 the last few weeks everything is looking pretty bedraggled! Things are cooling down a bit – it was only 93 at 9 o’clock last night . . . . Sure am envious of your garden but glad someone has the magic touch.
We are in Central Texas. Daughter is in Dallas . She runs a school garden program for part of the Richardson school district and she is keeping the gardens for several schools going (as well as her own) so she can take the produce to area Food Pantries. I keep thinking we’ve got to get you two together so you can compare green thumbs!
Again – your Garden must be akin to the Garden of Eden – just beautiful.
I’m so glad you did another tour! You’ve convinced me, Tipper. I see that you’ve carved your garden paradise out of the Brasstown woods. We won’t be able to do as much, but I’ll just bet that (next year) we could figure out a way to do a raised bed in the sunnier portion of our yard with either a cattle panel arch or at least a panel to grow tomatoes. Our season isn’t as long as y’all’s, but we do get longer days during the summer, so maybe…
Love your all your plants.What kind of bird is singing in the background?We have them for a few weeks here in NW Fla.
Debbie-I’m terrible at identifying birds 🙂 But Ron Stephens said he heard a towhee (joree) bird.
Tipper’s right. It’s a towhee. I like to think they say, “Drink your TEEEAAAA!” Sometimes the only say part of it, but that’s the full song. Such beautiful black, white, and orangey birds. You can often see them scratching the ground in the leaves looking for bugs. My sister-in-law’s husband calls them “digger birds.”
Wow, Tipper, you’ve got quite a garden there! Can’t wait to hear how some of those varieties do for you. As you know, I’m a big believer in stock panel arches, and I had planned to double the number of mine this year. I bought the panels ahead of time but then I didn’t have my Occasional Helper here at all this Spring, so I had to be happy with the arches I already have in place. I can tackle a lot of jobs, but moving 16-ft stock panels over hill and dale by myself is not currently within my power. My garden is way behind yours, but that’s New England’s short season. My sweet corn is about thigh-high and my pole beans are growing well – although I may also have planted them too close together – they almost look like bush beans they are so thick and leafy! I’m starting to see buds and blossoms, so hoping to be picking beans for lunch and Many Bean Salad soon. Isn’t a garden just balm for the soul? 🙂
What was a lovely garden tour,, thanks for the sharing … hope you did get rain , we have gotten some .
Love your garden! Keep those video’s coming! My Purples and Brandywines are doing OK. I have that same cherry tomato plant with lots of flowers and one tomato only on it. I might have over pruned..my tomato plants look more like palm trees. Im hoping Deer and the occasional Bear leave my other things alone.
your garden is beautiful! I liked hearing the rooster in the background!
Thank you, Tipper, for the wonderful tour! Your garden is beautiful. Also enjoyed the chickens. We have a speckled one just like yours. She runs up to us first each time we approach their area. They should be laying eggs real soon, I hope. They love watermelon & broccoli.
Loved going on a tour of your garden!!! Everything looks wonderful. My little cherry tomatoes and yellow squash are producing like crazy but you are blessed to have a lot more space and have it laid out beautifully. I also loved hearing your roster spreading the news “morning is here – get up and get busy,” brought back of lot of memories at my grandparents. Hope you get some rain.
That is an amazing weed-free garden! Seems like nearly everything I plant has running vines and would do great on panels like you use. The cucumbers, sweet potatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes and cushaws have taken over and barley leaves me room to walk thru the garden. Due to the heavy rains, the weeds are growing faster than anything else and I can’t get to them with a hoe. My corn, green beans and tomatoes are getting ready to keep me busy in the kitchen. We are blessed to have the ground, knowledge and health to raise our gardens. I love sharing with the less fortunate friends and family.
Thanks for the tour, it was inspirational.
Great tour – loved the music and roosters crowing in the background. I wondered what your voice sounded like! Keep up the good videos!
Thanks for the tour. You all have come a long way from carving out that homesite from the woods, building the house, making soil and so on. I know it has taken a lot of diligent effort; few if any great leaps but hundreds, if not thousands, of little steps toward making what I like to call a farmstead, but by whatever name one for sure – home.
We need rain to. We have had only 5 brief showers this whole month. The longest was maybe 30 minutes. Our bean vines are yellowing and have nearly stopped setting new beans.
I can hear you have a local towhee (joree) bird. I love to hear them and hearing your’s reminds me I don’t recall hearing this year the one we have had here in the past.
We are probably at least two weeks ahead of you, which is not necessarily a good thing. Our cilantro is long gone. I have pulled it up and scattered the seeds back out. It has a tendency to gradually increase because I do that. If I just leave it alone though the rain and wind will self-sow it as well. I have gathered the onions and some garlic and let them dry on the porch. Our Romas are essentially gone. We canned sauce yesterday . But we still have Better Boys (along with the plagued leaf-footed beetle, hope you never have them). Still freezing corn and drying apples. I have dried 6 one-quart bags of apples and have a peck of them yet to peel, slice and dry.
We have the purple bee balm to and it has done well. But the flowering is over. I planted “dwarf” (only shoulder high!) sunflower and some of them are blooming all up and down the stem, really cheerful looking.
We have Honey Rock cantaloupe and a small watermelon – forget the name. We have had 3 cantaloupe. They are ripe-looking and juicy but not sweet. So disappointing. So far we have not had the “honey” but at least not the “rock” either.
Sorry you hadn’t been getting rain. I think I must be getting it all. Earlier this year it looked like it was going to be a dry summer so I bought one of those orbiting sprinklers on a tripod and 100′ of garden hose. The day I got it, it rained. I didn’t even get it put together. A couple of weeks later the garden started to dry out so I got out the sprinkler and started to put it together. And it started raining! The third time I managed to get it together and going before I heard thunder. I had to “run” through the rain to shut the water off. Somebody asked me if I didn’t feel like a fool getting a sprinkler when we’ve had so much rain lately. I told them “No, if all I have to do is get out the sprinkler when we need rain, I’ll take it. Whatever works!”
I said “run” but it is really more of a controlled collapse.
Tipper–Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour. I took the virtual trip after coming in from my own garden, which is three weeks or so ahead of you thanks to climate differences. I don’t do any canning but I’ve dehydrated perhaps a bushel of tomatoes, just slicing them thin, tossing in a bit of olive oil, and dehydrating until they are dry. You can literally get close to a peck of tomatoes into a quart jar after dehydration. They are wonderful for soups, stews, in green salads, or any way you might use sun-dried tomatoes (sun drying is out of the question here, it’s too humid, but the end result is the same). I’ve also dehydrated several gallons of blueberries, two gallons of figs, and done some squash chips. Crowder peas and corn are frozen, although I usually let some of the former dry and just store them that way.
You have far less in the way of problems with tomatoes than I do. Even though I faithfully rotate, I have problems with various types of blight and soil fungi every year, and for whatever reason tomato hornworms and they dark worms which each into the tomatoes have been a major problem this year. I’m enjoying plenty of okra and as always green beans are out of control.
Your closing thoughts on the inner satisfaction and sense of self-sufficiency which comes from raising a garden and putting up stuff strike a wonderful chord, and I would add that for me (and obviously you) the sense of calm and opportunity just to pause and ponder, full of wonder, at earth’s bounty is a miracle.
Jim Casada
Tip, that’s a wonderful view of your garden. Everything looks so healthy and happy and the cattle panels are working great. It has taken a lot of your and the Deer Hunter’s to get this far and it will be that much again by the time all your harvesting and processing is done.
Good job! and thanks for sharing with us!
Thanks Tipper for showing your garden and especially the Malibar spinach which you said was really good and you would always grow it. I’ve grown the Egyptian spinach for the first time and it is totally unlike your Malibar spinach. My spinach looks like a weed but does have a good flavor. It has the slightest mustard taste and reminds me of chewing on sassafras leaf or bark. You know how sassafras grows in your mouth? I’m not sure yet if I’ll grow it again, waiting for the seed pods to develop and will try eating those also. The seeds pods are much smaller than okra but in the same mallow family.
Please show your Chinese okra when it produces. Very interesting!
Tipper, you know I’m computer challenged but I’ll get my Son or Grandson to help when it is ready.
Thank you so much!!! Your garden and surroundings are a joy to see. A fence row of tomatoes, cukes and this year some accidental half-runners is the best we can do for space these days. Usually enough tomatoes for canning though. Thanks again for the walking tour…….so beautiful!!!
Lots of hard work (and love) went into your garden. Spreading all the wood chips alone was a massive task, but everything looks so clean and neat. Yay on y’all!
What a great garden!
Green beans longer than a ladies fingers! Your garden is thriving! Hats off to some folks who’ve done an excellent job in a beautiful garden! I’m certain everything you’ve grown has been delicious! Just watching makes me feel better!
Everything looks good, I’m convinced cattle panels are the way to go, finished my greenhouse/hoop house except for stretching the plastic, got late tomotos planted so far inside.