It’s Not Too Late To Plant This Crop + Have Food All Winter

I hope it's not too late to plant this sweet potato crop. Heat loving.

It's not too late. This is when you plant it.

Well, so it's— how many days to maturity does this have? Because we only have—

we always planted this time.

Did you know— I know. Did you know if we only have 126 days till our average frost date and this takes 120 days?

We always plant them the last week of, uh, Great, and we're not behind. No, we're not.

We're not behind. This takes 120 days, but they said the first possible frost date is like at the 115-day mark. I guess we push it every year, honey. Certainly not much you can plant in June, but sweet potatoes is one of them. We're in that window between, uh, spring crops and summer crops and then upcoming fall crops. Those guys gave me a nice scare this morning. I came downstairs to train and I looked out and I didn't see anybody. I didn't see anybody in the chicken tractor. I didn't see anybody in the fence. And they got out yesterday. I thought, oh my gosh, turkeys are so dumb. They will kill themselves. I came out here, appeared, I couldn't see anything. I thought, I'll walk and check. Yeah, right, there's turkey doo-doo everywhere. It'll work itself out. Well, sure enough, a little later I saw them coming out. They must have been deep inside the chicken tractor. They're nice and safe inside there.

You use this weed fabric for sweet potatoes?

Oh, are you saying sweet potatoes don't do weed fabric?

Oh, I don't know, I've never—

How you gonna pull the greens up to harvest the tubes. Yeah, underneath.

David the Good did it.

Well then, let's do it. Let's see how you harvest though. Watching a David the Good video, a trusted gardening friend of mine. That's fine. Does he then lift up the fabric and harvest the sweet potatoes? First thing we're gonna do is pull up this— the weeds in the weed fabric. We're gonna plant sweet potatoes under a Because you want to put watermelons in this whole row next to it. Weeding the onions next, I see. Yeah, we should have— we should have took the time to do the fabric because now I'm taking the time to weed. I feel like sweet potatoes like to grow here in western North Carolina. Only rare have we not had a good Sweet potato harvest. Yeah, well, I think our bug net is getting pushed up, which is probably okay. Now talking about the brassicas, the collards are ready. Oh yeah, so we need to come home and harvest that collards and cook it.

Pretty sure these are all collards.

Next week we're leaving this week for Homestead Fest, so maybe next week we'll be able to tell between a cabbage and a collard. Look at your fancy tool.

And then you just go like that, you put the slip in.

Our brassicas are doing so well, they're jamming out the bug net. But I figure if they're doing that well, they're not really going to succumb to bugs. Hey, you're going to do the prodder and I'll plant. We planted 100 sweet potato plants. That will yield What, 5 pounds maybe? No, that's not too strong. Let's just say 2 pounds.

Every year varies so much.

Oh, we've had years where it's—

they were gigantic, where we literally just eat one sweet potato for our whole family. Of course, our kids were a lot smaller and they ate— yeah, sweet potatoes more.

First of all, we remember Boots every time we plant the sweet potato, right? Yeah, because what was it, 2000 and 18.

No, 2019.

He said, I'm gonna plant sweet potatoes this summer, this— if I make it, if I make it out of this. He had gotten injured or something.

It was 2019.

Oh, was it? Okay, okay.

It was right before he got really bad and he said, if I get better—

I couldn't believe he said that because he was in such bad shape. I'm like, man, that man never gives up. And it's not like he plants sweet potatoes every year. He was just gonna start You know, he didn't garden. He gardened a little bit when I was a little, but that's why it was a big deal, right? Yeah, you're gonna start gardening.

Well, you know, we said too, because before he was bad, like he was declining, but he wasn't like—

he probably would have started a garden. It would have been 2020, everybody was starting a garden.

He would have gotten us to help him.

So what he was saying— so what he was saying, you need to help me start a sweet potato patch in the spring. That's why I favored that sweet potato image on the Rooted Life. Austin popped that up, the image of the Rooted Life cover. Throw the QR code on the other side. Boots will be proud. ABC, always be selling. Maybe— no, no, it's not ABC. ABS. All right, Boots Up, one's for you. Getting our scapes off our garlic. Dude, that's ready. It's June. Um, the hay mulch has worked very good. There's only a few weeds broke through. Garlic is so easy. You plant it in October and you really don't come back till June.

Look at this onion from last year we planted.

We left these because they didn't mature in time, and we said let's just leave them. It's working, Rebecca. Look how big that's ready. I think we're gonna have a big harvest when we get back from the event. What do you think? Garlic, onions, peas. Get in, you go ahead and get some of these peas. Hey, look at all these peas. No, we can't leave those just because we're going to an event. That's like beside the point of an event, isn't it? Yeah, you can get all these, Gideon. This would be a good project for you. Rebecca, these are so ready. Yeah, get them. See, see how they're yellowing? I mean, they're not going to get any bigger, so go for it, bud. 75. We're not sure we were going to make it to the end, so we counted the slips that we have left, put them in bundles of 5. We have 75.

We've just never planted them this intensely. We always just do one down.

Oh, okay. Well, we almost have a— well, why don't we We can do it like this and see what happens. Yeah, I mean, we will of course, because what else? I mean, it won't hurt, right? We planted one row all the way to the end. There's two— there's two rows we could have planted, and then we went every other hole on the way back, and we've only got two left, maybe three. I can't tell if that's a leaf or a slip. That's a slip. Okay, so Get in, get the, get the hole poker and poke one here, maybe right through here. Look how easy this is. Got some garlic scapes from the garden, just temporarily put them in the fridge. Hopefully we're gonna blanch those. We'll blanch those and then freeze dry them. We'll blanch those when we blanch these peas that we're gonna harvest today. Let me show you inside this pea pod. Look at that, it's about the only—

not a big pea.

Veggie I'd like to eat raw. Gideon, you go finish harvesting peas and I'll weed. Or are you gonna weed with me? You would rather weed than harvest peas? Okay. Something happened to our onions here. I think the cows must have got out and wallowed in here. They're just fine right through here and at the end. Even if they're not going to make it, which I think they will, you have to weed because We don't want weeds to take over our garden. Let's hit these onions, Lily. You can do by hands near the onions, or you can go get that little handheld hoe. I've got a little time. I've got a stirrup hoe with a thin stirrup on it. It's pretty nice. Hey, are you not picking those? Are you? Don't pick any more onions. How many did you get? That's it?

Yeah, there wasn't much left.

That's that whole row out there? That's that whole 50 feet of peas?

That's a lot. Well, I read too, but like peas, you want to like keep harvesting them.

Oh, okay.

Like even, um, to like produce further.

So were there some that were edible? Oh yeah, they were big enough. Oh yeah, see how they're yellowing? Yeah, I don't think they're gonna make it much further anyway. And he said she's tried to weed, and when you weed, it just pulls up the peas. They're yellowing, and there's not that— it's not like there's that much more second crops on it. Right, Annie?

Yeah, one of my videos got 100,000 and 9,000. Yeah, how? I don't know.

Oh, it's short?

Yeah, short.

Heck yes! How many subscribers did it get you? Like another 300. Dang, look at you! Your hard work's paying off.

Look!

Oh my gosh, why did you do that? Keep doing that and breathe through your— there it went. Because once Jonah jumped in a barrel of corn on a— on the farm tour and got a corn so far up his nose we had to go to the hospital. But thankfully that pea just went right out of him. Okay, you're gonna do the corn, I'll pick back up on the onions. I'm gonna level with you, hour and a half in this hot sun, maybe 200, maybe 300, 300 feet. That's not the first time I weeded this. When Rebecca said let's weed fabric this, and I'm like, eh, because I didn't want to figure it out at the moment. Comparing it to what we've done over there, it's basically no work after we get it started. I should have listened. We should have weed fabric this. And that's all the weeds I got. That's really not that much. I mean, it's just kind of a— you got to be careful. And these onions laying over like they are because the cows must have wallowed in them or something. Another point for the weed fabric. It's our first year using it. And, uh, so it's been an experiment, but so far I'm really liking it. We're serious about growing our own food, and, uh, this ain't gonna— here are these, the onions the cows harvested for us. You've done about half, maybe. Oh, you might get half of this bowl full. Look at all these bees. We're gonna grab some of these for lunch. Did Lila already grab some? Oh good, you cooking those peas, girl?

Oh yeah, it's in the back.

All right. Oh good, oh good, they're probably done then, huh? Grocery haul! Give him a red pepper. Smelled it first. Is it okay? Is it weird? I'll have it. Thanks for going to town for us. Peas from the farm, babe. Pork from the farm. Tomatoes from the farm.

You zucchini from the farm.

Wow, lettuce from the farm. How are those peas?

They're so good.

What's the plan now for them?

I want to blanch them and then put them on the trays and freeze dry them.

No vegetable eater. These are freaking good. End of day, and we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 trays of peas from our garden that we're gonna hard freeze for 24 hours and then freeze dry for future use. Happy day, y'all!