what's going on growers it's James Prigioni coming to you live from
jersey it's august 28th today and me and tuck want to bring you along for a
backyard garden tour the only thing is there's a few things that like
i guess they're a little upsetting but we'll get into that more as the video progresses let's go
before i show you some of the issues that i'm having in the pooh forest i want to show you some
of the great things that are going on like look at this tomato this thing is insane i've shown you
the height of it before but i actually got to get a tape measure out and a ladder to show you like
it's just crazy so i'm going to get up here on this ladder we'll take this tape measure
drop it all the way down to the bottom to get the actual height of this thing so
tape measures touching down there as i trail all the way up this thing is over 11 feet already it's
so cool and even though this is really cool and it looks cool it's definitely not convenient i mean
who wants to climb a ladder to get your tomatoes one thing about it that i love is that it's saving
so much space because if we trail up 12 feet just think about how much vine that would be if it was
sprawled all over the ground so we are getting a lot of extra space by growing it really tall but
this isn't the ideal way to do it in this palette raised bed this is i think the best way to do it
which i'm going to show you right here but before i show you i want to take you back to the oranges
these are the trifoliate oranges these things are getting pretty large and i'm in new jersey
throwing oranges this isn't like the typical orange but it's just the fact that you can do it
it's so fun for me so orange is right here let me show you nice the best set of them we've ever had
look at this back here bam one two three four five or six just hidden up more down here
oh my gosh look at this little crust there you gotta watch out though because
these things are super spiky so that is really cool we'll make some orange juice
or some orange eight or something with this thing because you can't necessarily eat these
fresh that's not the kind of orange they are but it's really cool to have apples and oranges in
the same garden and you know almost growing right next to each other this is how i think we should
be growing our really tall tomatoes notice this thing's growing all the way to the top you'll see
and look at how full the sets are and as we trail down you'll notice how this is bent at the bottom
that's because i did something called lowering and leaning i lowered this vine
so to get that bend in it so that i can get more easier access to the fruit so as we look
through here this thing is just absolutely loaded this bed and this is a better way to do it in my
opinion because um you know it's more accessible more convenient and just easier overall to do
i've got so many other things to show you and not everything like i said has worked perfect
so i'm gonna you know show some of the things that well they didn't go perfect so let's go there are
some things though that went even better than i could have imagined and the apples are one of them
this honeycrisp apple has just done incredibly well as well as some of the williams fried apples
that i have too i mean look how much fruit this has and it has actually dropped a good amount of
fruit that i've been snacking on because it's been like relatively windy lately look at under here
these just fell the other day look how big these apples are look at the size of that this is honey
crisp nice and ripe i mean you don't get much better than this in my opinion when you grow them
in the backyard so even though i have some big issues that i'm going to get into this you know
kind of sweetens it up a little bit and makes it easier to take i think let's check out these beds
next to us though that were starting to convert the seasons are changing so with the change
of the season we got to change the face of the forest so that's kind of what we're doing we're
switching from some of the uh summer stuff to our brassicas and things which are doing pretty well
but we're still holding on to some of the summer like these peppers right here so half the bed is
going towards fall half is still focused on summer these peppers are looking massive
looking really good i can't wait to start eating them we've got some ripe ones back here it looks
like the sweet apple pepper it's the first time i'm growing that so i can't tell you how good
it's going to be until i really taste it it looks like the boss wants a snack of pepper
so maybe this guy could try the first sweet apple what do you think boy huh pretty good
this guy got a fresh haircut so throw some hearts down in the comments if you love seeing them
he's 11 but i'll tell you in my opinion this guy doesn't look a year over two right boy he's still
good so let me just grab this pepper and see if he wants one we'll just twist it right off
look at the color on that one boy not too bad huh
i don't think he knows how to get into it let me let me bite it for him
we'll let him play with that but i actually want to try this one i've never had this
good flavor not as good as the jimmy nardello in my opinion more mild but still pretty good i don't
know if he's gonna eat it but he's at least gonna probably find a place to bury it so we'll let him
go go work the cucumbers over here are doing real nice too happy with the production especially even
this late into the season and we've got more cucumbers in other sections so just really nice
prejude apple this is one of the things i've definitely made a bit of a mistake on
i should have pruned i should have thinned this a little more but there's so many apples so
sometimes it's a bit too thin i mean a bit hard to thin overall though i think it'll do real well i
think we'll get a good harvest from it but this is definitely a late producer when it comes to apples
that's what's great about gardening though you got to have those early mid and late producers now
let me show you a section that's doing the best probably ever has and these niagara grapes are
they're ripe they're ready to be taken and look how many there are so i'm just about to grab some
not today but soon i'm going to be grabbing them there's going to be an epic harvest so i'm this is
one thing that i'm definitely grateful as you just trail through and see how many we have on here
well looks like the boss has been busy and it looks like he's burying his pepper
so he's planting a pepper for next year he probably didn't want it right now but
we'll make sure we eat some for next year and right next to him here you'll notice
the chajuro pair it drops some of its pears with the strong winds so this is the butterscotch pair
these things are taste so good and they've got that coloration on them look at that
that's that coloration we want when it's ripe so we'll just taste this real quick we have a
lot more fruit on there even though i did thin pretty well i'm still not really happy with the
size of the pears and i actually think something that's starting to come back to the fact that
it's getting a good amount of shade because these hazelnuts have just gotten so large and they've
actually become you know they're where some of my issues are so let's get into that after we taste
this jajiro butterscotch pear this is an asian pear not like your typical european that's why it
almost looks like an apple and they're better in my opinion than the european pears let's taste it
doesn't taste like any other pear or any other asian pear so sweet that's why they called the
butterscotch so now let's get into something that well you know i'm upset over because well for a
few reasons one is because i've talked it up so much this year so it's like i'm almost embarrassed
in a way even though this kind of i feel like there's not that much i could have done about it
but these hazelnuts were absolutely loaded with fruit i've showed you guys so many times i mean
we're talking buckets and buckets of nuts so i had a high level of confidence thinking that i was
going to get a good harvest from them but that's just not how things turned out the squirrels
really just went absolutely crazy on them and one of the things that's been kind of like upsetting
and painful about it is that i like the hazelnuts have grown so well and they produced so well and
i got a lot of nuts as you'll see here there's still even some nuts on the ground so so basically
i watched the nutrient grow well i watched it flower well i watched it um you know produce well
i saw all the nuts loaded on it i saw them har uh ripening so i was so close to that harvest so
it just things to see that squirrels take all of them i just couldn't do anything about it the hard
part was watching them because every day they were coming out here stealing them and it was like what
can i do i couldn't cover the whole tree it got so big so i'm kind of calling out to some of you
to give me some suggestions because i don't want to trap and injure the squirrels i know they're a
part of the forest but i've got to find a better way to balance them and deter them from stealing
all my nuts i can't complain too much though because i've got so many other things right risty
so we're just gonna be thankful for the things we do have try to learn from this lesson and then and
then just try to grow essentially and we're just thankful for this opportunity overall though it is
a bit upsetting and it is a bit demoralizing we're going to keep moving though and we're going to try
to focus on some of the lessons that we've learned in the past and try to take something like this
and like one of my favorite sayings is that every failure brings within the seed of an equivalent
success so we're going to hope that there's a seed of success hidden in this failure and we're going
to try to strive for it let's pop into the young food forest and check out how things are grown
in here we've got the keyhole raised bed it's doing okay not as well as it was doing because
it's starting to like you know transition over to fall so this stuff is slowing down a little bit
but notice in the back here look at this starting to take over as some things are slowing down
this is the sweet potato so we've got some sweet potato planted back here starting to really come
through as things are slowing but let me take you to this birdie's raised bed where you've
got incredible level of production this year right now it's puck's just going back there
like a crazy guy but right now it's thick with cucumbers look at this big cucumbers in here
another white one here but notice in here look i started to plant some cabbages that are like
slowly growing in the shade of the cucumbers and stuff so as these cucumbers start to finish
i'll just cut them out and the cabbages will already be in there waiting to take over the
location but right now they can't take over the location because the black king eggplant is just
raining supreme in here thing's a monster so it's got small eggplants soon they'll be massive and
we'll be eating those because they're so good i've got a lot of different eggplants i have planted
i want to show you two the sunflowers right here i talked about how this sunflower was gonna
wash over the garden and it's done its job it's just it's it's time to produce seed and slow down
a little bit that stinks because we love having sunflowers in the garden because we love seeing
them so what we did was we just staggered another sunflower behind us here is the sunflower that
i wanted to show you that's taking over it just opened up its first head so this is just starting
and the other ones are going to produce as well so this is the replacement sunflower this way we
always have that beauty watching over the garden we love to see it and then here you'll notice it's
a bit windy today here we uh have the tomatoes that i just planted and let's sprawl some of them
right directly into the ground they're doing real well look at this side come over here
the suldaki that thing that'll make you smile look at the level production on that and then look at
this down here i'm growing the cherokee purple splitting a little bit getting good coloration
and look at all the fruit on it insane this is what happens when you sprawl and i like sprawling
some of my varieties if they're disease resistant and if i'm growing on wood chips because the wood
chips prevent some of the soil uh soil-borne organisms and bacteria from getting into your
plants if you just do it on the dirt and let it sprawl then you're gonna just invite a lot of
you know bad bacteria and fungus and stuff right to your plant on the other side this one's staked
up a little better look at that fruit sets so we're gonna have a lot of tomatoes and watch me
peel this back here oh beautiful absolutely beautiful and our late fruit just like the
asians we've got the american pears this one's doing okay the tree's not doing fantastic nothing
to write home about but i still think it's gonna have a decent production on it on the other hand
this baby is this one's something to brag about look at this thing i love to see it four years in
the su lee great production i'm really happy with this one notice how less diseased the
leaves are and everything just overall a much healthier looking tree so i really like this
trail to the left and look at the growth on the on the blueberries this year even though they had
good production they had an incredible level of growth so come winter what we're going to do is
prune out some of the old growth in these in these blueberries allowing the new growth to take over
that's the stuff that's going to really produce a lot of fruit for us so we'll move over here
time for some monster tomatoes a little sun scald on the top ones but look at this thing oh this is
the pineapple bi-color man look at that i think this one is yeah look at that nice coloration
i've got another one in a different section and we're just waiting on these hungarian hearts
look at that holy this thing is going to be a heavy tomato i can tell just by the weight
i love to see it let's go check out another monster tomato right here
here's the mushroom baskets oh sprawled on the ground too man look at those these are heavy
oh i love to see it and then as we trail up look at all these looking real nice check out this
other pineapple bi-color i was talking about right here this one's almost ripe look at that i like
that coloration on the bottom i haven't tasted them yet but overall pretty cool looking tomatoes
i just love tomatoes so much like this is jersey jersey if you guys don't know
we're known for jersey tomatoes and blueberries so you notice i have a lot of those in my garden
it only makes sense to put some time into those because when things happen like you know
it's not always going to work perfect sometimes i heard it saying sometimes it's going to
uh hail on your crop sometimes it's going to rain on your parade and that's just reality so we don't
want to be naive about that so we know that's going to happen for some things like the hazelnuts
this year we just want to make sure we have other things to replace that like it was terrible a
year for the hazelnuts but an incredible year for the apples so there's always something kind of to
replace what doesn't do well which is exciting and fun let me show you these eggplants look
at these babies the ping-tong i love this one an incredibly productive asian eggplant really nice
some little peppers over here and then the beauty on this eggplant is is crazy look at these
oh my gosh i've showed it before next to the uh next to the dragon tongue
beans because the patterns are the same but man that's like literally out of a magazine
i love to see it and it tastes good check out these eggplants too you'll notice noticing we're
like nearing more towards fall when our eggplants and our peppers take over some peppers look at
these eggplants in the back and look at this one too i think this is the rosita no the rosa
bianca oh my gosh like these are so much cooler than the black king in my opinion because the
the color is just so beautiful i want to show you right here too look at this rosemary
you'll notice i have like maybe i don't show a lot but i have herbs scattered throughout the garden
in locations that make sense so this rosemary is in the middle of this bed because i grow a lot of
brassicas here bra rosemary is a great companion for the brassicas so it makes sense to put it
next to the brassicas it just they grow well as we look to the right here i have a lot of flowers and
stuff still in this section because there's nothing better than having some flowers and
i'll show you a clip the butterflies have really been coming onto the flowers
in the monarchs so it's really cool to see them out here and just uh you know provide
a little food for them we both get a lot out of it so let me bring you to this section over here
where we have another beautiful apple this is the belmak this thing won't be ready till like
later in the season probably october time but i did have one apple that kind of rotted a little
and fell to the ground so i just want to try it and see i know it's not ready yet but i
just want to get a idea of what the flavor could be sorry if the wind is getting a
little strong it's just uh it's just yeah you can't fight the weather let's try it
not perfectly ripe more of like a macintosh you almost kind of flavor in my opinion
different than the williams pride does not have the texture of the honey crisp but overall a
pretty good apple i'm sure they'll be better when they're ripe but still pretty happy with
the flavor we'll put that down there for now and then the um ground cherries i showed you there's
honestly too many to eat right now it's just crazy but they are they are really good so this
is something you could put into your garden if you want something productive quick easy fruiting
annual so over here you'll notice i ripped out all the uh all the peas i meant all the cucumbers
and now we have peas all coming up you'll see see the little heads on the piece the shoots
and then we're covering it with the insect netting because the birds love stealing the
tops of our peas and snacking on those so we make sure to keep that covered and i'll usually tie it
to the top but in this section it's kind of hard let me show you over here where we have more peas
that are coming up and i'm and i'm caught in a pickle trying to tie it to the top because you'll
notice we have the einstein grapes right above us i don't want to i don't want to rot those out too
bad because the flavor on these grapes are so good this is definitely like a less productive variety
than the american ones i have like the concord and the niagara and the catawba but it's good to have
some of these i think because just the flavor is so good they're really good let me just try one
seedless a very grapey flavor not like foxy like some of them are it's it's it's sweet um
definitely a better fresh eating grape than the niagara's or the um or the concords in my opinion
good flavor though we want to keep them away from tuck you can't eat these then to the left
of us here is an apple that's doing relatively well too this is the bella i believe and this
is the trademark one for a rain tree i'm pretty sure they're the only one that has this variety
so it's supposed to be a really late producer we're talking like late october so this one
will help extend our season it's always good to have apples like that just to you know give you a
longer harvest period then we can trail up on this one too here's the cherry bomb another tomato that
decided it wants to try to grow is you know maybe to the clouds i don't even have steaks
long enough i've talked about making sure your steaks are like 10 foot tall because if you've
never grown tomatoes like this you'll just be blown away on how big they actually get i mean
it's like i feel like i did that video about willy wonka i honestly feel like that sometimes
i mean i'm walking around here grabbing tomatoes from you know 12-foot tomato plants
i'm not going like this i'm going like this half the time gotta get tomatoes from here apples so
being out here has just it's been a really great experience and even though i didn't get everything
i wanted like from the hazelnuts that's not always what it's about because it's not just about what
you get i think there's also about what you become so i may not have got a lot from that hazelnuts
but through the process of learning and growing this garden i think i've become a better gardener
which in the long run is gonna allow me to get bigger harvest in the end that's today's video
growers thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it i hope you got something out of it this video was
like a little different how you know i showed you some of my issues i showed you the other
side of the coin because that's always there there's always this level of dualism where
you know some things go perfect but then some things don't for everything we get we've got to
give something and i think that's a part of nature too so it's never going to all work perfectly
one thing that's encouraging for me is it seems like every year i have less issues
because i've learned from the issues in the past and then all that knowledge and
that i've gained from all those issues i try to take that from like seven eight nine years i take
all of it i assess it and i try to invest what i've learned into the next year and i think that
makes a considerable considerable difference i think you guys should try to do the same thing it
makes gardening more fun too because when you're out there and you feel confident then it's just
more enjoyable so i want to thank joe wheeler for your channel subscription thanks for being a part
of team grojo it's like it's cool of you to join and me and tuck just wanted to send out a thank
you to you so we appreciate it we also want to thank everyone who's giving this super thanks
in the channel that's just uh it's incredible to know that you guys are just willing to give for
for me and tuck out here just playing having fun in the garden so i wanted to thank you for that
too we also want to say that hit the like button hit the subscribe button don't forget to check out
the merch down below and remember whenever you're on amazon start your shopping with our amazon
affiliate link tuck look at him hanging out next to the uh the herbs right there next to the thyme
just, in time boy and James Prigioni we'll back at you again real soon we out!