GIANT BEANS!!! WHAT??? LET'S TALK GARDENING, TOMATOES AND CANNING TIPS

hey guys this is Josh Denny rich farmer these aren't beans they're gourds good gracious this gourd is like five feet long today on the farm vlog we're going to take you into the garden we're going to be picking tomatoes and we're getting prepared to can our Tomatoes so we're going to take you and we'll show you what we're picking we'll tell you a little bit about the thought processes of what we're doing and then in a future vlog we'll show you how we're canning our Tomatoes so let's go in the garden today we'll talk about the garden a little bit and we'll also give you a few tips on getting ready for canning so come along today we're gonna have some fun these are huge so one of the questions I get asked a lot because our garden is producing more than we need really I mean look at these gourds I don't even know what we're gonna do with them but I do know what I'm gonna do with them right now so we'll throw them into the chickens and anything that's extra that's going to waste will either be put in the compost or put with the chickens okay we'll break these gourds up and the chickens will just chow down on awesome so folks here we are in the garden as you can tell we've had a lot of rain and it just kind of knocked everything down overweighted everything and things are just toppling over here in the garden we're at the point in our Tomatoes where we're about to call it quits we're going to go ahead and keep harvesting Tomatoes as long as the tomato vines will keep growing them and we'll keep canning them but what I'm going to show you today is our thought processes and how we pick the tomatoes and what we pick and what we leave on the vine so these Tomatoes here are our roma tomatoes okay and what you're seeing here is the tomatoes that are just getting ready to get ripe and they're just starting to turn we pulled these off the vine as soon as they start to turn so that they don't fall off and go to waste on the ground you don't pick a tomato up off the ground and can it you just don't do that so any of these tomatoes that have fallen off and hit the ground we will not use them we've got some awesome delicious roma tomatoes we have two rows of Roma's now at least Tomatoes here are called patio delight and let me show you a little bit of unda lightful situation so the tomatoes split these guys split on the end and the reason they split is because they started to turn which stops the growth of the skin and they absorb more water so we got a rainstorm after it started to turn and they split they're still good for canning but they're only edge they'll eventually develop a mole or mildew in those cracks and they'll be unusable so we'll take this guy and we'll throw him to the chickens by the way the chickens love Tomatoes now with our recent extreme weather I haven't had time to get in the garden like I'd like to so we're going to go in we're gonna pick a bucket or two of tomatoes now something that you really need to know about picking tomatoes with a bucket or a box is you only want them three layers deep once you start stacking tomato on top of tomato and type of tomato and you have them four and five layers deep or a full bucket full you're gonna smoosh the ones on the bottom and they're gonna rot before you can can them so think about that so basically our garden has remained pretty much weed free since early spring and the reason it's remained weed free I'm gonna pick and talk by the way the reason it's remained weed free is because we came in we took care of the weeds early on with the hoe and then we came back behind and we lightly mulch the area and as you can see there are just no weeds in here to speak of maybe a little sprig of grass here and there but really honestly no weeds to speak of our garden is flourishing it's doing wonderfully it just takes that little extra touch that little bit of extra work to get it done right now if you're considering growing a garden I don't recommend you grow a garden this big for a family of four I recommend a smaller garden start small and go get yourself some double ground mulch from a local supplier and spread it down just very thinly around your plants early on in the year and you won't have weeds so folks a lot of planning and thought went into our garden this year and a lot of that planning and thought has been shared with you and it's really paid off I hope you'll watch all the garden series that we have here and stick with the channel we'll have a whole lot of awesome tips for you in the future about living in the country and clearing land and working the land and feeding your own family now we'll keep on picking our tomatoes and anything that's bad we'll toss right over to the chickens everything kind of has a symbiotic relationship here on the farm so if we're over here picking tomatoes and we see one with a bad spot we feed it to the chickens we don't pick them up off the ground and try and kin them it just gets bacteria from the ground in the tomato and it's going to set you up for failure later on in your canning maybe three weeks down the road all of a sudden you some stink and it'll be your cans going bad so we do not take them from the ground no matter how beautiful they are and try to can them we've got a lot of Tomatoes here probably 50 pounds of tomatoes today to pick when we only planted somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 or 60 tomato plants all right look at these guys even these guys that have just barely started to turn will go ahead and pick those now on this tomato we call this the stem or the pecker I call that the pecker and you want to get that pecker off before you put it in the bucket because if you don't it's going to stab right into the other tomatoes in the bucket and you just don't want that we've got a lot of tomatoes and this is just what tomatoes look like when it's close to the end of the season except for the ones that fell over because all the rain and storms we've had so I'm gonna get busy here in the garden working on these Tomatoes I'm gonna pick them off and then we'll take it in the house and we'll show you how we store them before we can them okay there's a specific way that we set them out to get them ripe before we can them so stay tuned [Music] guys what a bounty we're all done picking tomatoes it seemed like the more I worked my way through the garden the more tomatoes that I found changing color so I got done working and got done going through the garden and went back through and there were more Tomatoes it looked like they turn red as I was walking through the garden anyhow we're going to go up to the house here and I'll show you how we store the tomatoes and what we're doing to prepare for our harvest and our canning now be sure and don't be shy leave some comments down below if you have any suggestions or anything like that we're going to get up here we're gonna start canning probably in the next couple days so be sure you subscribe and check out that vlog we'll teach you how to can tomatoes successfully okay it's a little complicated for some folks but it's not really all that complicated we'll simplify it a whole lot for you let's go get in the house oh boy it's hot out there so we got our tomatoes here and we're going to show you what we do in the house so here we are in the house and this is our prep table for some of our tomatoes we'll go ahead and set those tomatoes out on that prep table and this is our harvest for the year so far now all of these tomatoes were fairly green when we brought them in they just started to change color and you can see that they've turned an awesome dark red these Tomatoes will keep in here for approximately a week and a half to two weeks and pretty much you just have to kind of sift through on a daily basis and make sure nobody's starting to get any rot now a little bit of dry is okay we don't rinse our tomatoes before we store them we rinse them right before we blanch them for canning and this is one that has a little rotten spot on it so we'll throw that to the chickens we'll set it aside basically every day just kind of go over the tomatoes and you can see where some have started to get a little bit too right and I'll pull them out of these little areas what we'll do next is we'll cover all of our counters and also this 8 foot folding table right here with tomatoes so that we have enough to do a lot of canning and make some awesome sauces now as you can see we've got our canning set up going over here we've got some jars washed we'll go through all that in a future vlog but this is how we store our tomatoes and we always put the blossom end up and the stem end down okay always put the stem end down and do not let these tomatoes come in contact with each other it's a good idea to keep a fan going on them all time don't let them touch and let them breathe okay so guys thanks a lot for watching the vlog today I hope you learned a little something about tomatoes and about growing tomatoes and about getting ready for canning tomatoes so we'll see you next time on the next vlog be sure to pound that like button subscribe to the channel and I thank you a whole lot for coming today alright [Music] hey honey I'm putting this on the video oh yeah guys look at what we got right here this is today's tomato harvest just one day's tomato harvest we are gonna have our hands little canning it's SuperDuper awesome this is mrs. Stoney Ridge if you guys haven't met her she didn't get in the garden because there's a little biting bugs they like her a lot more than they like me all right guys we'll see you next time