I don't come from a garden family so I have to try things other have known from childhood I have 3 year assappagus now I had to replant my for drainage issues Thanks Thanks
I put asparagus in in the ground 5 years ago. I grew it from seed. I was getting some lovely plants and great growth from the little seedlings. Year one passed and the next spring almost the first thing to poke its' head out was the asparagus and it looked very healthy and I watched it grow through the year. Year 2 really nice baby asparagus poked its head up in the early spring and looked even better than the first year. I was greatly anticipating the next year and the plants grew well and then they went dormant usual. Year 3 early spring and there was my asparagus peeking out to say hello. I thought if they're nice healthy stalks I'll try a couple this year but I was trying to be patient to wait till the next year. Year 4 spring came and there was my asparagus nodding to say hello to the new year. After waiting all that time I was really looking forward to my first harvest. Asparagus wasn't even 2 inches out of the ground so there was some time to wait. I went to bed that night with the thought in my mind that I would be picking asparagus pretty soon. Little did I know that sometime between when I went to bed and when I woke up the squirrels, or raccoons, or both tore every single plant out of the ground, Every single plant. Not happy with just pulling all of the asparagus plants out of the ground they decided they would chew up and mangle the roots and the crown of the plant. Needless to say I was heartbroken and I haven't replanted asparagus again. Although it's nice to have something that'll come back for 20 or 30 years I just don't have the heart to wait four years for it again
That actually sounds like the work of groundhogs. Smaller rodents like chipmunks and rats will dig up plants, but won't necessarily eat them, as sometimes they're trying to dig around for loose soil to find seeds or make a burrow. If you find decapitated sprouts though, then that's small rodents. Larger pests like deer will attack the higher growing plants that are easier to reach, but will not pull things out of the ground. I've only known groundhogs to dig up and chew apart everything, as they aren't picky and they tend to be voracious. They will learn the locations of edible plants and relentlessly go after the same site. A groundhog did that to one of my sunchokes before I managed to remove the pest from our garden. Consider fencing to keep them out, though the mesh has to be buried about a foot to keep them from digging under it. Scent deterrents and spraying hot pepper on plants can help. For me, it's been a combination of trapping, and fumigating their burrows with smoke bombs, that finally got rid of the groundhogs.
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 Thank you for the information and tips. I do have hardware cloth on the bottom of the raised beds to keep out digging pests, but you never know. To be fair, I did not see what got to the plants. Just basing things on what I've seen on, around and near my property. I realize there are many other likely villains who are unseen.
This was a tough video to watch. I bought property and moved across the country a year and a half ago. Being an excited gardener, having eft my wonderful garden behind, I eagerly placed an order for thirty nine trees, lots of berries, and many perennials with a reputable nursery last December. My anticipation over receiving the large order was palpable. But spring wore on. And on. The nursery lost my order! They have apologized and given me a credit to compensate me, and will fill the order next season. But I'm so disappointed to be behind by a year. And no, getting a refund to try to order from another source this late in the season wasn't practical. I have bought trees and berries locally, and fortunately have a great seed collection. But watching you show the lovely healthy fruit trees and perennials in your garden is bittersweet. You epitomize patience in your garden so I'm trying to be gracious following your example, as I garden vicariously through you.
I've planted a lot of future treasures lately. Berries, Apples, plums, pear, grapes, peach, rhubarb and more! I've spent more on my garden than my car, including fuel haha
I just got my first allotment and it had lots of fruit bushes on already, I was so lucky. Just harvested red currant, gooseberry and raspberries. Rats got my strawberries tho☹️ hope your plants thrive!👍
I have two rhubarb plants that I transplanted over 25 years ago and I still get three to four harvests from each one every year. I have to give the stuff away.
Perennials are also hardly any work once they get going. When I was working a demanding job and raising five children my garden was mostly fruit bushes and the most demanding part of growing them was finding the time to harvest the fruit.
I apreciate the balanced way you develop your garden! One of the best gardening channels in YT, great content, and very enjoyable to watch. Thank you so much! (and excuse the eventual misspelling please :)
Our asparagus is in its second season, and we can't wait to harvest it next year! Also, I'm happy you included flowers in your list 😁 I focus on them just as much as food, and it really helps. Thanks Gardener Scott for another wonderful video and happy gardening!
I tried to rush things by ordering 5 to 6 foot bareroot Asian pear trees. I think that was a mistake. After three months they have only started showing signs of life, especially one that I thought was dead. I think it was too stressful for a larger tree to be shipped bare root and then try to survive in a completely different environment than it was used to. I would have saved money just getting smaller trees and waiting three or five years. It looks like I will be waiting that long anyway with the larger trees if they even make it through the winter.
It’s actually really great to watch your long term plans develop and evolve. Can I ask, how many years is you initial plan for? For your from scratch to first thoughts of established garden?
Thanks. I'm in year three of a five-year build plan. At that point the structures and beds should be done and the focus will turn more to plant selection, experimentation, and propagation. Along with just relaxing a bit and enjoying it all.
I wish this video came out 2 to 3 years ago when I was first starting to garden. But I likely wouldnt have done anything because I didnt know how much I liked it and how long I would be gardening. Still last year I put in strawberries and this year dwarf thornless blackberries and raspberries. Limited space (my wife wants some grass for the dogs) stopped me from putting in trees. But I am thinking of backyard orchard culture with trees in large containers for next year. I would have done it this year, but ran short on the money I would need.
Hey Scott how are your sweet potatoes doing? What kind did you plant? Mine are small but leafy, and I planted Murisake, Georgia Jet and Vardamon Hope we get some!!
They're a little slow because we've been having cool weather but they're still growing. It's a generic sweet potato I picked up from the grocery store to see how it will grow.
Loved this video. Kind of like a great self help book that motivates you to run out and just get started. Even if I wasn't a gardener already, I'd be inspired to get digging 😂!
Planted 4 heritage raspberries about 2 weeks ago. 3 of them are dead (or look like they are) and 4th not doing well 😭 Next time will plant earlier in season
Earlier is better, but keep watering the soil. It's not unusual for the leaves to die but the roots to stay viable to produce new shoots later this year.
@@GardenerScott Thank you for responding and for the advice! I have kept up with the watering just in case. The nursery had a really good deal on them and knew I was taking a gamble.
@@reneejmj My mom got some raspberries that all "died". This spring there were just dried sticks, we took them out, it was really easy because there were no roots. A few weeks later little raspberry plants came up about a foot from where the "plants"/sticks were. They were alive underground. Don't give up.
I don't have a house yet but am starting many trees and bushes in grow bags and people act like I am insane for doing that. Nut trees and bushes are notorious for taking along time to produce taking up to 17 years depending on the nut from what I hear. I have pear varieties that some say takes 10 years to get a sizable harvest or any harvest at all. Apple varieties can take just as long. I agree on the part of let things spread. I have arctic raspberries which is a ground cover. The arctic raspberries started as 4 inch cubes have have since spread about a foot in one year. Fruit trees will grow 10-30 feet for most with persimmon getting around 50 feet. Hazelnut or filbert will vary in size of being between 3 and 15 feet based on variety and are one of the smaller nut plants being a bush. A lot of nuts will be like the walnut being 40 feet or a pecan tree being 50 feet. I think almonds are in between. I have everything that can spread and grow in Colorado short of Paw Paw which take up a bunch of water and go bad super fast as well as teaberry which most say are bad unless processed.
Speaking of perennials, I've found that there are perennials in every family of plants we commonly grow, and I've been shifting my focus to those so that I don't have to mess around with thousands of seeds every spring. For brassicas, there are perennial kales like Kosmic, walking stick, Daubenton's, and Portuguese. There are also crambes like sea kale. Horseradish is itself a perennial brassica, one of the easiest to grow, and you can use the leaves just like mustard greens. For nightshades, I've started some goji berries from seed. Potatoes can be perennial if you leave some in the ground, either on purpose or by accident. Peppers can be overwintered indoors in the right conditions, as can tomato cuttings. For squash, the perennial is the chayote, which I'm growing for the first time this year. You can take store bought chayotes and root them in water pretty easily. Although their hardiness is zone 8, you can overwinter them in the ground in zone 7 if you mulch them. While most if not all mint is already perennial, I'm trying to grow crosnes, or Chinese artichokes this year. They're the only mint that produces edible tubers, and I've heard they can spread pretty fast. For sunflowers, there are obviously sunchokes. Once you plant them, you'll never get rid of them. They make good decorative plants too, and they can be stored by simply leaving them in the ground over the winter months. I'm considering looking into the American groundnut for a perennial legume. I've heard it can make for a good companion to sunchokes.
That is great advice! I wish my asparagus that I planted last year and grew fabulously would have came back this year 😔. Oh well at least I planted two pluot trees last year and they are doing well. I. love your pollinator garden!
Rhubarb jelly, I'll give it a go, thanks for the idea! I made rhubarb juice for the first time this year and use it unsweetened as the base for smoothies and adding to sparkling water. The leftover cooked mash from the juice is for making traditional desserts although it's not as pretty as fresh chopped rhubarb....but still tastes lovely! Looking forward to watching the rest of your garden's plan come together.
rhubarb grows faster than you might expect from seed. My winter garden indoors under some grow lights included a few dozen rhubarb plants, and within two months they were 10" tall and looked like the ones you find at a garden center. While they say rhubarb is usually propagated by division, seeds seems like a great way to get enough of these plants to put all over the garden and use similar to comfrey.
hi Scott, GREAT episode as usual. I started asparagus this year in zone 6b. I planted 11 crowns but only 6 came up. Can I dig up the ones that didn't come up and put new crowns in or should I wait to see if they are "late bloomers". Is it too late to start new crowns?
Dig down and see if the ones that didn't come up are still growing or rotted or dead. You can put new ones in. It's a bit late for new crowns which is why it may be difficult to find new ones at this time of year.
Absolutely invaluable advice!!!!! After my last move, I got fruit trees in straight away and from year 2/3 they have produced heavily and consistently (warmer climate). Why oh why didn't I get the asparagus in, and all the berries. Next move, if there is one, i'll follow your advice to the letter. Thank you!!
Very sound advice as usual Gardener Scott. Funny enough when we bought our house I had mentioned to someone that I was excited to grow a garden. They specifically said NOT to grow asparagus because although it can last decades, it takes years to get a decent harvest. When I finally got my garden a few years later, the first thing I planted was asparagus(I mean, it can last decades!)🤣🤣🤣. Perennials in general were actually my main focus because I knew it could take years to get a large harvest. Little did I know we’d completely change the location of the garden and have to move everything(although, there were many a failure that year so it worked out for the best)😅. Thanks for the great suggestions!
great video. glad I planted a bunch last year. it's working out, balanced pollinators with vegetables before I learned the lessons you teach so capably. Time takes time! Love to start everything from seed.
Yes, yes, and yes! I would give anything to be able to time travel and tell myself to add more asparagus. Like, LOTS more. If I'd only known just how much more tender and delicious it would be...and how quickly it would get eaten....! Now I have to wait another year. Ah, well. :)
If you want a shade tolerant asparagus, consider growing hostas. Yes, the decorative plant, which is part of the same family. It's just as edible as asparagus, grows in much the same way, and in Asia is actually grown more for food than for decoration.
@d You cook it exactly the same way you'd cook asparagus, and it tastes very similar. You can either eat the shoots like asparagus shoots, or you can eat the leaves as leafy greens. If nothing is bothering your hostas, consider yourself lucky, as it's a favorite target of deer in my neighborhood.
@d No problem. For deer, I use a combination of a homemade repellent spray (the reason I grow Carolina Reapers) and a fence to keep them out of the backyard. The fence is a chain link that's low enough for them to jump, but I set up a palisade of stakes behind it, which is enough to discourage them from trying.
@d They wouldn't actually do that. Gardener Scott explained it in a video on how to deal with deer. A tall fence that they can't see through is ideal, but otherwise you want to place objects behind the fence so that they don't think it's safe to attempt the jump.
An experienced gardener knows that gardening is a long term effort. This is a great video encouraging people to think in terms of future years of delightful harvests. I did put my blueberries in pots to be able to move them to their long term place. Also, it makes it easier to create the low pH soil. I have asparagus and rhubarb in dedicated perennial beds like you. I love your tree proverb! You inspired my espalier apple trees that I planted two years ago.
Thank You for pointing out that Time/Seasons are important factors in planting a garden, flowers, and trees. A point that is missed by many in a world of instant gratification
Hi everyone, I need help! I am a new gardner. I built raised beds, but we didn't get them complete until mid spring here in SC. My carrots and beets went in later than they should have. The carrots were very tiny, think smaller than my pinky so I left them in the ground. I pulled them today. The carrots are very bitter. Is that a result of leaving it in the ground too long? Is the small size a result of getting it in the ground so late and the weather being hot? We had two weeks where temperatures were over 100 degrees. I've heard that carrots should be planted deeper than the directions indicate. Is there any truth to that?
Carrots are more bitter when they're young so you may have harvested too early. The high temperatures can also cause them to taste bitter. Sowing seeds deeper in summer can help with germination for a fall garden, but usually isn't necessary for spring sowing.
I buy from a number of sources: Territorial Seed, Baker Creek, True Leaf Market, Botanical Interests, Seeds N Such, Seed Savers Exchange, and others depending on what I'm looking for.
Maybe it's the variety (Heritage), but in northern Colorado I've never had a problem with birds eating raspberries, and I've grown them for 15 years. Now strawberries and succulents on the other hand....
I remember when my grandmother had rhuarb ,going back 60 years. We used to pull a stalk and dip it in sugar because it was so bitter. But then during the summer she would make a couple of rubarb pies and there were the best pies you ever had. Memories and traditions long gone. Now we have purple hair. Where is my time machine
I did put strawberries in right away, but because they often fruit in the first year I didn't include them in the same category as plants that need more time.
There were established aronia bushes on my property when I bought my house. I’ve tried and tried but I can’t find a way to make the berries palatable. I’m a little surprised to learn that you’re growing them intentionally. How do you imagine using them?
My asparagus ferns are turning brown at the top and dying off. They are two year old roots also that haven't been harvested yet and it's discouraging seeing them die off at the tops. I planted them approx 6" deep in a prepared foot high raised bed with compost, mushroom compost and horse manure/bedding so it is fertile well drained soil. Ever run into this problem? Thanks Gardener Scott.
I moved 3 weeks ago but had access for about a month before that. I got some of my fruit trees and berry bushes planted. and the rhubarb. Then a local nursery had an end of season blow out sale and I got 36-40 asparagus crowns, some raspberry canes, and some beautiful pollinators. Mad dash to get them in ground, and some going to be in pots for a little bit this year. My plans are food forest guilds and then a large veg garden. I just need to observe the land a bit to figure out locations.
I bet you can't wait to harvest some asparagus, mines not ready yet too! I love rhubarb jam, not tried jelly but have some rhubarb ready to harvest and I e already made jam so might try jelly. Do you have a good recipe? Thanks Nick 👍 ps I had to make chocolate Courgette Cake as I have too many courgettes.😂🤣
I planted my first rhubarb this year it was growing beautifully and now the leaves are wilting and dying. However I think it's a gopher eating the roots. Do you think it will survive if I dig it up and move it?
It has a sour, tart taste, almost like citrus. I like to juice it for jelly, but there are many recipes for mixing it with other fruits and a lot of sugar to make pies and crisps and crumbles.
I didn't mention elderberry but I'm growing them too. I do minimal pruning of the bushes until they get established. Having more than one of each type helps with pollination and make bigger harvests.
