Epic Gardening

I found this strap-on kneeling device designed for bricklayers and HAD to try it out in the garden. It's a little bulky to walk around in, but was way more helpful than I expected. Made repetitive up & down garden chores like weeding and harvesting an absolute breeze. Might need to adapt this for us gardeners... What do you think? Would you use?

Invited my friend @Grafting Dragon Fruit over to the homestead to propagate some rare varieties. These techniques look complicated, but are actually pretty simple! It’s a forgiving plant to propagate.

Grew a giant sunflower head and made my own Epic Ranch flavor roasted sunflower seeds #garden

Growing your own herbs is the highest bang for your buck in the garden. Theyre $ at the grocety store but EASY to grow and transform into a ton of awesome uses in the kitchen. #garden

Search for my seed company Botanical Interests if you want to try any of these epic varieties #garden

Asparagus is a plant that takes a LOT of patience to set up, but once you get it going, it can quite literally pay you back for a LIFETIME. When planting it, you can choose from seed, seedling, or crowns, which are the roots and rhizomes (underground stems) of more mature asparagus plants. Most people choose crowns, but in our case we planted seedlings. The first 1-2 years of asparagus' life, you DON'T harvest the spears that come up. This is because they become the asparagus ferns, which are providing energy to the crowns below and helping them mature so that the plant can "handle" harvesting in the future. Usually it takes about 3 years to get asparagus to a robust enough state that you can harvest from it regularly. But do not fear - once it IS established, there are records of asparagus producing reliably for 15-30+ seasons - more than worth the wait!

When you plant carrots make sure to thin then out! They’ll stay small otherwise. Thin to about 1-2” between after they sprout. And eat the baby carrots! #garden

A classic southern California spring harvest - broccoli, citrus, avocado, root crops, and loquats. And eggs. WAY too many eggs. Please tell me what to do, I'm drowning in EGGS. Keep on growing, Kevin

If you're behind on starting seeds, this tip MAY help you. It's saved my watermelons, melons, and luffa planting in the past. For seeds to sprout, water needs to get into the seed hull and trigger the germination process. With large, thick seeds, that can take some time! By taking small snips (we love the Felco 322's on our store) and making a TINY cut at the very edge of a seed, you'll allow water inside quicker. You might be surprised to find your seeds sprouting twice as fast! Note: This tip is great for large, easy to handle seeds - don't do it on small seeds!

Spring is almost here, so I’m enjoying thr last few weeks of (relative) calm in the garden before it gets hectic. Signs of life everywhere right now! #garden

It might not seem like there's much to plant in February, but if you're starting seeds indoors you can get a LOT going right now: Carrots: These are the perfect plant to winter sow, or direct sow under cover. Usually a milk jug works well here, it'll give them enough warmth to not freeze but they'll germinate BEFORE your last frost. And yes, it IS possible to transplant carrots (though we don't do it often). Shin Kuroda is a great variety to try. Lettuce: You can get these started in our new Epic 16-Cell trays and transplant them out in the garden in the next month or so. Big fans of Little Gem Lettuce, but pick whatever you like the most. Peppers: Highly recommend getting these started now as they take a while to sprout and grow to a transplantable stage, usually 1 month minimum and sometimes up to 2 months. You can pot these up indoors for quite a while before needing to transplant, so get them started ASAP to get ahead of the season. Give Shishito peppers a try if you haven't grown them yet, they're amazing. Chamomile: Kevin's favorite herb, mostly because he likes to say it in a weird and awkward way. We try to tell him to stop, but he doesn't listen. It's a beautiful, prolific herb that makes a delicious and relaxing herbal tea. Readily self-sows, so plant it once and you'll see it pop up around the garden next year. Peas: The quintessential Spring crop, direct sow these and they'll pop up when it's warm enough. Give them something to climb - a fence, chicken wire, netting, etc. Try Sugar Magnolia Peas for a nice snap that you won't be able to resist eating straight out of the #garden

After a rainy two weeks, it’s a beautiful late winter day, which means it’s the perfect time to spend the afternoon in the garden, preparing for the season to come! #garden

Wasabi is the hardest plant we've ever tried to grow. To this day, we've never had a successful crop! Part of that is trying to grow a cool temperature, shade-loving plant in San Diego, Zone 10b. This plant LOVES temperatures between 45-70°F, hates direct sunlight, and is a member of the cabbage family. It's so tough to grow that most of the "wasabi" you buy at the grocery store or eat at restaurants is actually a combination of horseradish, chinese mustard, food dye and other ingredients. If you want the real stuff, look for Wasabi japonica on the label in the 1st slot on the ingredients list - or try growing your own!

If it's your first time growing fruit trees, you might be surprised to find out that almost all fruit trees are grafted, meaning they are actually TWO fruit trees! The first is the rootstock, which is below the soil. Rootstocks can have different properties, most commonly height - dwarf, semi-dwarf, and standard. Then, you have the fruit you actually want to grow, which is grafted TO the rootstock and grows above ground. The problem happens when the rootstock starts to grow shoots ABOVE ground. These are NOT the variety you want, and you should remove them ASAP.

If you're wondering how commercial farming differs from backyard gardening, you're in for a surprise! @Potato Ty and I had a little "competition" to see who can grow more potatoes and... I got slaughtered. There may be a new Potato Daddy in town... In all seriousness, the efficiency of large-scale farming is truly something to behold, but don't let it dissuade you from growing Epic spuds at home. They're one of the most beginner-friendly crops you can grow in the garden and SO rewarding. 🥔🥔🥔

PRUNING PEACHES - It's legitimately scary to prune fruit trees, especially for the first time. What if you do it wrong...did you ruin years of growth? The pruning strategy below is one we've used on peaches for 3+ years now and we've gotten SO many peaches from this tree we have to give them away: 3 D's: Remove all dead, diseased, and damaged branches. Easiest place to start, both practically and emotionally 😂 Open Structure: Peaches "want" a open, somewhat airy interior, so remove large branches that "cross through" the interior of the tree. You can also remove any budding branches here, as they'll be blocked by the outer layer of the tree and will develop poorly. Lowering the Canopy: Unless you're a giant, you probably want a smaller tree where you can access your fruit. Kevin is 6'4" and still struggles to reach the top of the tree in this video, so he's cutting it down a touch so he can actually harvest the fruit without needing a ladder or stepstool. 6-8' is great for a backyard peach tree. Thinning Cuts: Each bud will produce a flower, which will produce a peach. Sometimes you have 12+ buds on one thin branch, which is an offshoot of ANOTHER branch! This is a recipe for disaster as the weight of all of the peaches will snap your branches. You can cut 30-50% of the length off of these branches, which removes those bud sites and "thins" the amount of peaches you'll have on that branch. Some of these techniques, particularly the last one, seem extreme, BUT will result in a structurally sound tree that produces a ton of high-quality peaches. #gardenproject

Before refrigeration, we all had to figure out how to store our harvests so they lasted as long as possible. Uber Eats didn't exist hundreds of years ago, after all ;) Carrots and other root crops store EXCEPTIONALLY well sandwiched in between layers of slightly moist sand. If you do this, it's important not to wash the carrots beforehand. Store them as-is, with bits of dirt and roots still attached as this helps extend their longevity. Add a 2" layer of sand to the bottom of a container, then layer in carrots, making sure they don't touch. Keep layering until you reach the top of the container, then store in a cool, dark area uncovered. Your carrots will last up to 6 months like this - nature's refrigerator!

Solid root crop harvest, one of the easiest categories of plants to grow if you’re just looking to set it and forget it. Carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, all grow more or less on auto pilot once you’ve got the soil, set up correctly! #garden

It's been three years since we planted our asparagus patch, which is about the amount of time it takes for a patch to establish... and establish it did. We've never seen a stalk this tall, easily over 24" in length. Usually they get woody at the bottom at this point, but after cooking it up it ended up delicious! A pro tip on harvesting #asparagus: if you snap it off by bending it, it usually snaps off right at the part where it's starting to get woody, leaving the less edible parts behind.

Did you know paprika is basically just dried and ground up sweet peppers? Different cultures have different methods, but most of the time it's a Capsicum annuum variety of pepper. You might know those by their more common names like bell pepper, Hungarian sweet peppers, etc. Last year, we grew a ton of peppers and threaded through the "caps" with some twine and a needle, then hung them in our garden shed for a few months. The key here is drying in low humidity, otherwise you get rot like we did with a few of ours. Then, when dry you take them down, cut the tops off, and chop into small pieces. Use a spice grinder instead of a food processor, it'll help get to a fine powder. Strain with a fine mesh strainer and you have bright, vibrant, spicy & sweet #paprika that you grew yourself!