Garden Tour July 2023! The Stock Homestead

In this video, we take viewers on a full tour of the current growing areas of The Stock Homestead in their current state of development in July 2023, including the raised bed garden pads, the high tunnel, and the food forest. We talk about the growing styles, what we’re growing, what’s done well, and what hasn’t in the 2023 growing season!

Video Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:11 Raised Bed Garden Pads
01:23 Flowers and Companion Planting
02:20 Borage Success!
03:19 Lower Pad Raised Bed Area
03:55 Asparagus
04:23 Main Tomatoes
05:18 Cucumbers, Carrots, and Lettuce
05:56 Onions and Shallots
06:07 Rhubarb – Japanese Beetle Attractor
06:32 Herbs
06:43 Strawberries
06:57 Sunflowers
07:16 Celery Success!
08:11 Beet Success!
08:33 Onions From Seed
08:47 1/4 Stone Base is Perfect for the Garden Pads
09:06 Hinged Hoop House for Cabbage to keep out the Cabbage White Butterflies
09:46 Shop and High Tunnel Positions
09:57 High Tunnel Winter Use
10:58 High Tunnel Summer Use
11:33 Heirloom Tomatoes and Bush Bean Success!
11:51 40% Shade Cloth
12:07 Eggplant Fail in the High Tunnel
12:28 Summer Squash Not Great in the High Tunnel
12:39 Pepper Success in the High Tunnel!
13:13 Heirloom Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, and Brandywine Tomatoes
13:26 Micro Irrigation in the High Tunnel
13:41 Garden Design with the Future In Mind
14:16 The Food Forest
14:28 Justin Rhoads’ Bulletproof Garden Method
15:12 Blueberries, Grapes, Blackberries, and Rasberries
16:17 The Fruit Trees – Peach, Nectarine, Plum, Apple, Cherry, Pear, Persimmon, and Fig
16:52 Watermelon
17:18 Potatoes – Kennebec, Yukon Gold, Pontiac Red
18:04 Corn – Ambrosia and Silver Queen
18:22 Ground Cover Because We Hate Weeding!
19:06 Volunteers!
19:30 Cantaloupe and Butternut Squash Fail
19:56 Overall Position of the Different Garden Areas
20:24 Wrap Up

About The Stock Homestead

From our earliest days as a couple, we dreamed of one day having the property, space, and time to have an extensive garden, bees, and maybe even a handful of chickens. Kim and I both grew up eating fresh-grown vegetables from our family’s garden and, in Kim’s case, chicken and goat from her grandfather’s pens. Through the years, children, business, hobbies, and the general busyness of life quietly pushed that dream further down the path.

But like so many others, the empty shelves and meat coolers that resulted from the onset of a global pandemic rearranged life’s priorities and stoked a vision for pursuing a life that was closer to the land, healthier to our bodies and souls, and more under our control.

So began our journey of transitioning from a home and lifestyle that relies completely on the production and delivery systems that sustain modern American society to a more self-sufficient, healthy, and sustainable one. Understanding that such a seismic shift would mean rethinking everything, we accepted that this would be a long journey of many small steps and that patience and celebrating small victories would be important. And so it has been.

We also know that others are interested in making this kind of transition, so we decided to share our homesteading journey and what we’re learning, but also the greater aspects of our lives like music, relationships, hobbies, and faith along the way to give the whole thing real-world context. We hope that doing so will inspire and encourage others to take the next right step in crafting the life their hearts long for, closer to the Earth, to each other, and to God.

Welcome to The Stock Homestead.