Products used in this video (Affiliate links)
Video Summary
Hey everyone! Today I’m out in my garden for the first time in a little over a month, which is crazy because typically I’d have everything planted by now. It’s the Saturday between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, and we’ve had record amounts of rain this year – I’ve literally never seen water build up in my buckets like this before! The weeds have gone absolutely crazy since I was last out here, so I’m tackling those today in hopes that tomorrow I’ll be able to plant out all my starts. I give you a full tour of the garden showing what’s happening with everything: the potatoes are thriving (they love all the rain), spinach is starting to come up, my blueberry bush came back for the first time ever after I added that acidifier fertilizer, one blackberry bush didn’t make it but the other is alive, my raspberry vines are doing something weird where they’re not adding leaves to existing vines, and I’m not sure they’ll fruit this year like they’re supposed to. I also show you my grape vines that I pruned in late April, my large hibiscus that’s coming back after I cut it down, some volunteer lettuce and onions from last year, and my radishes that are starting to grow. My plant starts are doing pretty well overall – the tomatoes and peppers especially look fantastic, though I had to let go of the peas and the onions didn’t have much success. I also check on my fruit trees including the pear tree which might have a disease or nutrient deficiency, the peach tree showing first signs of life, and the plum tree that we’re waiting to see if it comes back. After pulling weeds for a while, my forearm starts hurting and I get bit by a bunch of tiny black ants I didn’t even know could bite, so I call it quits for the day even though there’s still tons more to do!
Video Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome back. It’s Kari at Keep It Simple DIY, and I am out in my garden for the first time in a very long time. It’s been about a little over a month. It is currently the Saturday between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, and typically I have the garden already completely planted by now. But we have had record rain. Luckily not a terrible amount of tornadoes this year, but I’m finally getting out here. The weeds have gone crazy since the last time we were out. The whole yard really needs to be weeded, so that’s what I’m going to do today in hopes that tomorrow I will be able to plant out all my starts. So I’m going to start by weeding this area, and then I will give you a look around and show you how things are looking.
First thing I noticed today when I came out is there’s water in this bucket. We never have water build up. And if I never, I mean literally I’ve never seen water build up unless the snow is just melting. Oh, there’s water in there too. This is crazy how much water there is.
So I try to use this little area as my compost. It’s hard because there’s only five feet from the fence to the side of the house. And so look at that. A lot of these buckets are cracked, which is why I use them outside. Hey, they’re clean now. It’s hard though to manage it because it’s such a small space. That one’s also a little flooded. I keep extras here. So here we go.
Weeds aren’t too terribly bad in this area because my husband tilled it when he got the water going. And then here’s where my onions will go. You can’t tell too bad. There’s just a little bit and then some grass up at the end. But here’s the area that we planted not too long ago. This is a volunteer potato. This is where I had my potatoes last year, and otherwise I don’t have anything planted there.
The neighbors just decided to mow, but I’m going to hope that you can hear me over them mowing. These are the calla lilies. I typically have other flowers that I put out, but I haven’t yet. And then our potatoes are actually doing great. Potatoes love all the rain. And then our spinach is starting to come up. So here’s all the spinach. So hopefully we’ll have a good harvest of that soon. And there’s nothing in this bed.
So let me show you kind of what we’re working with here. The grass is a little bit overgrown. We’ve got a bunch of weeds. I’ll bring you in closer to them to show you. I did go ahead and mow our front yard this morning because it was looking way worse than the backyard in terms of overgrowth around the edges.
So over here I have a blackberry bush that I don’t think is alive. It just looks like a little twig, so I think that one was a fail. And then over here I’m super surprised. This is a blueberry plant, and I did add that fertilizer specific for blueberries, the acidifier. And it’s looking amazing. It came back. This is the first time I’ve ever had a blueberry bush come back, so hopefully it stays alive and produces some blueberries for us.
This is where I have a little hibiscus plant. The jury’s still out on if it’s coming back or if there’s just weeds growing. If it doesn’t come back, I’ll add a fruit bush here though.
Now this one’s my other bare root blackberry bush, and it actually is alive. So that’s great. Hopefully that’ll thrive. I’ve got my Raspberry Shortcake and my raspberry vines. Something weird about the raspberry vines though is it seems that they are not adding leaves to the ones that are already vining. So everything that I’ve read said that these vines are a two-year process. The first year they vine, the second year they fruit. I haven’t gotten any fruit out of this, and last year actually all of these vines came up. So I’m expecting them to fruit this year. I’m not quite sure though.
This is another blueberry bush with a ton of weeds all around it. Of course, that’s what I’m out here today to do. And I don’t think it’s alive, but we will give it a little bit to see.
I did get out here a few weeks ago towards the end of April and I pruned my grapes, so those are looking good. They are starting to come back. This one though, I’ve gotta tame the bottom. What happened and why it’s growing like this is the very first year I put it in, the rabbits ate it down, and then now it just keeps coming back in multiple areas.
Now I have a few sections like right here where there actually is room to put something. I’m going to put watermelon and cantaloupe in, and the goal is tomorrow to get the black buckets down in the ground. So hopefully I will have all of these weeds cleared out by then.
Our large hibiscus is coming back. That’s what all these little growths are. So the hibiscus that I have, you have to cut them down every year. So I did that a few weeks ago, and then now things are looking great.
There’s nothing here. This is where I like to put pumpkin. Over here is where I have some asparagus, and I’ve previously had artichokes growing and I don’t see any. So I’m gonna probably plant some more and hope that we get some artichokes going.
We have some volunteer lettuce from last year, so that’s always a win. You know, this is in my rocks. This looks like, this is lettuce. This is lettuce in my rocks. That’s funny.
This bed has some volunteer onions. I’m debating on if I should move these over to where I’m putting the onions this year or just leave them here. I think I’m going to have to research some companion planting.
And then over here, the only thing that we have in is our radishes, which they are starting to grow. I think those are the radishes at least. They look like something that I planted.
Now here’s a problem that I have. All of these weeds, they’re just ridiculous. Usually I would have been out here by now, I don’t know, two, three, four times pulling weeds. And you can’t even see, there are tons of dandelions, but all throughout the yard we just have tons of these dandelions. So, and like here, this is just nuts.
It never rains. I think we’re like projected to potentially beat the biggest year yet. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but it’s definitely been raining so much more than it typically does.
So let me show you what I’ve got here. Here’s my starts. I did have to let go of the peas. They just didn’t make it. But the things that are doing well is the kohlrabi, which needs to get out here soon. The cantaloupe, I can’t tell if it’s doing well or not. I think it’s kind of dying, but it’s hanging on. Did not have a ton of success with these onions, but some of my tomatoes here are doing fantastic. So this tomato, probably the best one I’ve had yet. So that’s cool. And my peppers are doing amazing as well. Some of them are a little bit leggy, but they’re doing phenomenal.
I checked out my trees earlier. This tree is a pear tree. I’m debating on if it has a bit of a disease or something because some of the leaves just look a little sad. Some of them are kind of yellow, which could just be like a fertilizing issue. Let me see if I can find them. Well, some of them just have like bug damage, so that doesn’t worry me too much. But like when they’re dead on the side, which could be bug damage too, but it doesn’t typically have pears on it because I didn’t know I needed to grow another pear tree. So I bought one, and I don’t think this is coming back. This one actually got lost in the mail and they refunded me for it, so I’m not too surprised if it doesn’t come back.
But this one here is the peach tree, and it’s coming back. I noticed, let me show you, from this today, the first signs of life. So that’s cool. And then a plum tree, I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see if it comes back.
But anyways, enough chitchatting. I need to get to work and get some of these weeds pulled.
There’s still a ton to go over here and along this walkway, but I think the biggest thing for my buck is going to be this back area. Oh, I’m a little out of breath, so that’s where I’m going to start.
All right, those ants weren’t happy. I stepped on their home.
All right, I got most of these weeds pulled from the perimeter. My forearm is hurting though, so I am going to stop. I also just have been bit by a bunch of black ants, really tiny black ants. I didn’t even know that they bite. And so I have some of them still crawling all over me, so I need to go get those off.
Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe, and I will see you in my next video. Bye-bye!
