[Music]
hey guys I'm Deanna and this is our
little acre of NC so we're here in the
Piedmont of North Carolina we're still
seeing it's mid-august so we are still
seeing temperatures like upper 80s or
low 90s
my friends to the east on the coast are
still enjoying beach life and our
friends to the west over towards the
Asheville area they are actually
starting to see some milder days I think
which is great for them we've probably
got another four to six weeks before you
can really say our days are turning mild
last few weeks were incredibly wet which
we had been an incredibly dry spell we
didn't have rain I mean nothing really
to even talk about for about two months
prior to that our entire April had been
just soaking wet like water standing
everywhere wet we lost a lot in the
garden and back in April and had to
replant a lot then we had two months
worth of dryness which pretty much
killed everything and ran everybody's
water bills up and then we just had
probably two or three weeks of almost
daily rain that combined with pest
issues and my 40-hour workweek has
created what I'm about to show you and
I'm not proud of it by no means but it
is what it is and I have to show you
this in order for you to understand
what's about to happen in the next few
videos because we're gonna be doing some
major shaking up of this garden here so
let me turn you guys around this is my
weed patch that used to be my garden so
down here I had some volunteer
watermelons that had come back from last
year the corn that I planted on this
side of the bean fence none of it came
up and what did well I think some of it
did come up but it all died I also had
beans along that fence there they've
done okay I've only got about four
quarts worth out of my beans this year
there's some beans around the little bit
of corns there
there and it's not doing great the
Mexican bean beetles have gotten into my
beans this year which was the first for
me my watermelons suffered blossom end
rot because of the inconsistent water I
mean even watering every other day
there's the extreme wet spring followed
by an extreme dry summer really took its
toll and then I still have some sweet
potatoes on the other side of the bean
fence over there and that's actually
from slips that my husband's family has
been growing in Eastern Kentucky for
40-plus years they're doing okay as far
as I can tell my squash my spaghetti
squash that I had the squash bugs just
loved him apparently a lot more than we
did because I didn't get any of them and
what a little bit of squash did come out
on them ended up dying from blossom end
rot I had 30 yes 30 tomato plants I
think that was 5 different varieties
they have not done well at all
I had a variety on here that normally
does exceptionally well and I actually
had given my leftover starts that I
didn't get planted to a friend of mine
so my tomatoes that I gave her are doing
fabulous but here not so much and I now
have a leaf footed bug issues so these
tomato steaks are coming out today
and everything's gonna get weeded down
we're gonna take the weed eater to
everything because my lawnmower
apparently is down today to all this
corn is volunteer corn from last year
that beautiful video that butterfly so
this volunteer corn came back up after I
had tilled some corn in that was still
standing from last fall and it receded
in perfect rows which was awesome I'd
never seen that happen so that was like
a science project for me we grew
heirloom varieties which is why they
came back we do pretty much everything
heirlooms and you can see there are
there corn stalks over here that's
probably taller than my husband who's
6-3 we have got a little bit of corn off
of it nothing that we've been able to
eat yet because I kind of let it dry on
the counter and we'll probably use it
for seeds next year but we have got a
little bit of corn and we'll pick what I
can today and then this is all coming
down as well the watermelon that I
intentionally planted down here did not
take off and what few watermelons did
start to grow died from blossom end
rights so what's gonna happen is a few
years ago when we lived in a much
smaller house we had a lot more property
than what we do now we're only we're not
even really quite on a full acre we are
on like point nine three or something
we used to live on about ten acres and
the majority of that was used for hay
farming we had access to about two acres
of it and the majority of that was
wooded so we had a very small garden
next to our driveway
and unfortunately it was in a really
really bad place it was constantly
getting washed out because of where it
was any time it would rain everything
would just wash away so we had found an
article in I think it was mother earth
news about doing borderless raised beds
basically what that was was we dug
trenches and took the dirt out of the
trenches and pushed it up onto the
untilled part of land and that became
raised beds we mulched it with hay in
the first year that we did that we had
an amazing cabbage and broccoli harvest
we had Cherokee purples and German
Johnson's that had done wonderful I mean
it was just a really good that was the
first year actually in quite a while
had been able to do as much canning it's
what I did so that was a great year for
us so what's gonna happen is we're gonna
repeat that here that bean finish OG was
coming down it's actually going to
become my compost bin tomato specs are
coming down I'm gonna do sort of back to
Eden slash raised bed concept server the
next few videos we'll go into that a
little more
kind of showing you what's going on with
that and I'm glad you guys have joined
me I hope you enjoy my acre of North
Carolina as much as I do and look
forward to future videos