The best gardening & homesteading channels on Youtube
Starting a new garden this growing season? Want to avoid the most common pitfalls and guarantee success? Avoid these 5 mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to munching your way through your home-grown produce. Yum! If you love growing your own food, why not take a look at our online Garden Planner which…
Just starting out? Let’s start at the very beginning, with starting seeds. Sowing seeds isn’t quite as simple as A, B, C but with these easy to follow tips, you’ll be growing in no time! In this week’s video, Ben explains everything in this comprehensive guide to successful seed starting. Look no further! Everything you…
What Are Cotyledons? What do they look like and what are they for? The two floppy, bunny-eared leaves that pop up first during germination. You’ve probably heard the term and likely you could point them out….but do you truly know what cotyledons are? Let’s find out! In today’s Quickie, we’re going to be talking all…
Leggy Seedlings, It Happens Every Year. Tall, thin, and generally weak young plants that we’re trying to get going so we can have a head start on the growing season. Great way to increase our summer window, but it only works if we can build tough, resilient plants to be eventually moved out into the…
Winter getting you down? Can’t wait to get growing? In this week’s episode Ben warms our hearts with his selection of vegetables that you can start sowing in February. You can feel really smug knowing that you’re getting a head start on the growing season and there’s a surprisingly wide variety to choose from. But…
Herbs Are Easy To Grow. Fast to start, quick to flourish, and easy to harvest. Herbs indoors and out are great crops for beginners and veteran growers alike! And although they readily grow from seed, by far the easiest way to grow many of these beauties is from cuttings! Today, in a longer-than-normal Quickie, let’s…
Want to make your gardening jobs easier? Want to save time and find short cuts? Well this video is for you, our muddy-fingered friend! In this week. Ben reveals 10 of his best hacks to lighten your gardening load and help ensure you success in your garden, including some not-so-obvious lightbulb moments. It’s short and…
In this episode, I answer the question: “Can I grow vegetables indoors?”. Grow your own groceries with me in 2023 – I’ll show you how to grow, harvest, and eat from your own garden grocery store in a quick, simple, and inexpensive way. 🍅SALE: 20% site wide at https://calikimgardenandhome.com with code “growyourgroceries”, ends Monday, 1/16/23.…
Want to start a new veg garden in 2023? Or perhaps you’ve already got a few growing seasons under your belt but you want a few tips on how to improve your layout. In this week’s episode Ben walks us through his garden and shows us everything we need to think of to plan the…
Grow your own groceries with me in 2023! I’ll show you how to grow, harvest and eat from your own garden grocery store in a quick, simple, and inexpensive way. The new series kicks off January 3, 2023. Subscribe to our channel, so you don’t miss a single episode. 🍅CLEARANCE SALE: 50% off all CaliKim…
Want to cut costs in your garden? Potting mix and compost is arguably a gardener’s biggest yearly expense. in this week’s episode, Ben treats us to some money saving tricks and tips for filling pots and raised beds for a fraction of the price, if not entirely for free. Better get collecting now! Off you…
Indoor Herbs Made Easy! Quite literally, this planting technique work every time. No more seeds drying out or spindly seedlings dying from damping off or other ailments. Strong healthy starts for indoor herb seedlings means strong healthy plants for the biggest harvests! In today’s Quickie, I’ll show you how I plant ALL of my indoor…
Join me LIVE as I share tips to beat the winter blues!! 🥬SALE: 20% off everything at our Seed & Garden Shop (https://calikimgardenandhome.com) with code “growfood”. Free Bring on the Pollinators Cool Season Flower Seed Collection (6 varieties) with purchase. Ends Monday, 12/12/22. Includes CaliKim Seed Collections, CaliKim Smart Pots and signed copies of my…
Mistakes Are Made Every Year. Especially in my garden! Over water, under water, too much sun, too much shade…the list goes on and on. Everyone makes mistakes, but its the really keen grower that takes those missteps as learning experiences and levels up their gardening game as a result. So today, I’m taking my top…
In this video, I show you the best location to position a raised vegetable garden. Forged garden tools shown in the video: Go to https://gardentoolsaustralia.com.au/ and use code SSM10 for a 10% discount at checkout. Go here to get Birdies Raised Garden beds in the USA, Canada, and UK: https://shop.epicgardening.com/ and use SSME2020 for a…
Worldwide Community Garden Bed Phase 3! The joint venture where you guys pick the crop and I do all the work! We harvested Peas and Radishes in the last video, and kept the momentum going by planting even more crops! Our job today will be to harvest all the remaining plants and clear the bed…
We have been so busy selling flower bouquets from our roadside stand and farmers market, that we are falling behind on some tasks. So this week we are getting some help from our friends to check some projects off of the to do list. Our roadside stand is getting a small deck built out front,…
Why Are My Zucchinis Failing? A question often asked by new growers when their seemingly large, lush plants produce a failed Zucchini crop. It doesn’t make any sense and the plants looked amazing right up to the time the Zucchinis appeared…what gives? In this video, we’ll explore my top 5 reasons for why you’re maybe…
Forbidden fruits: Berries, banned? That’s right. In the USA currants were banned from being grown or sold for many years. This ban has since been lifted, and while UK and European gardeners are familiar with this fruit in their gardens, many Americans are yet to discover the wonders of currants. In this week’s episode, Ben…
This summer has been a hot one! Record temperatures, drought, and many severe conditions still lingering around Canada, the US, and abroad. Now, more than ever, its the little tips and tricks that can keep our garden humming along, with the promises of harvests up until fall! Individual Episode Links: Episode 81 – Fertilizing Peas:…
Plants Need Water. But so does your soil! And in these days of increasing heat and more frequent heat waves the ability of your soil to grab and hang onto moisture is more important than ever. In Quickie style, I got you covered. Today, we’ll focus in on your soil’s water retention with 3 ways…
Think you can’t sow in late summer? Think again! In fact, by sowing follow-on crops, you can maximise your growing space to give you two crops for the space of one. Sound good? Then watch this week’s episode as Ben reveals the many crops you can plant. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to start…
Zucchinis Are Best Grown Alone. I love companion planting and interspecies crop rotating, don’t get me wrong. But not all plants play well with others and some are just an outright terrible choice for it. Today, I got 3 reasons why you should never companion plant Zucchinis. Even though they are one of my favorite…
Summer is here, and the flowers love the heat, but the season of vacations can bring complications for selling bouquets, as customers who are soon to travel are unlikely to buy. This could slow our sales this week as we have noticed this trend in previous seasons. But the power of positive thinking is in…
Summer on our flower farm, is a busy place. We don’t work all the time, but between tending to the farm, harvesting and arranging bouquets, keeping up with the roadside stand, selling at Farmers Markets, or editing and filming these vlogs, we work almost all the time. We recognize the need for some work life…
Summer Is In Full Swing! I love this time of year because the garden is just massive and the harvests have already started. Early crops are giving bounty daily and the larger fruiting ones are well on their way. To help you guys along your way, here’s episodes 71 to 80 of Volume 8 of…
Juicy and sweet, hard to beat! Everybody loves strawberries, but not everyone has the space to grow them in raised beds. Not to worry! Strawberries can grow very well in containers, and there are many ingenious ways to do this to maximise space. Ben also explains the different types of strawberries and when they crop,…
It’s only early summer and already there is an abundance of tasty pickings in Ben’s garden. Follow Ben as he leads us around his garden showing us everything he has growing and sharing his knowledge. He’ll even show us the bits we don’t usually get to see, including his food forest, his ornamental border and…
Companion Planting, Should We Plant Our Crops This Way? Which ones? What plants go together? What plants do we avoid? So many questions. Honestly though, other than a few hard rules and plants to avoid combining together, Companion Planting is not hard at all. You just need to get started. And in today’s video we…
This video shows you a simple approach to weed control that can completely shift how you approach your garden because after all, us gardeners can get caught doing a lot of weeding! I hope you get a lot from this, and share the same excitement I have with this new approach for controlling weeds in…
