How To Grow Giant Root Vegetables. My Secret Is Mounding The Soil!

Hello, fun people. How are you guys doing today? If you're new around here, my name is Ashley. I look to take science and apply to all things science. In today's video, we're talking about how to grow giant root vegetables. So I took the weight of these guys and one's almost a pound. This one's over a pound. It's actually bigger than my biggest potato, which I'll do a separate video on how to grow giant potatoes because it's a little bit different method that I use. But yeah, anyways, and this is not an anomaly. I've got quite a few of these. I didn't, my carrots are still in the ground

The only carrot I ripped out was this one because I have to bring it to Nate's on

Monday because we're having a grower or shower competition. And let's just say I think I'm going to own Nate when it comes to products

Growing use a watering issue. He refuses to water and that's why his plants fail

But it's not a temporary thing. It's actually I grow these. This is not an anomaly. I did have to rip them out though

because I have so many. I have a whole year's worth of beets in this bucket and so much damage from bowls

So while I grew huge ones, I mean, was it worth it

I don't know. So don't mind the kitchen. I am processing a ton of food right now for the winter stores

And you guys want to know how I grew my giant veggies

So let's get into it. So this is going to be very specific to cold climate gardeners and also just root vegetables

My giant tomatoes I grew, my giant spaghetti squash, potatoes. It's all a little bit different how I manage it

So first things first is variety. You need to get the right variety for your climate

So I will leave the link down below for these two root vegetable varieties

I don't grow parsnips. I don't grow turnips. They don't really grow radishes either

That's because I don't like the taste of them. So this is kind of Keats

Carrots and beets is all I do for root vegetables. Reasons for that is I make beet relish, borscht, and then I just can beets

And you can just do them kind of like potatoes on a frying pan. Or you can make actually very good salad dressings from beets

And then carrots, I like to ferment, pickle. I also like to roast

They store very well outside of a canner. Beets not so much, but I'll show you how to store these

I'll show you how to store these on my second channel, which is more like the homestead prepper

whatever you want to call it. Just how to keep your food alive to eat when it's not in the ground type video

So I'll do a video on how to actually store these carrots properly

But these guys are in a can. I can show you. I'll do a video on the different ways I can these as well

So key here is variety. You need a variety that's going to do well

So the beets that I grow are a winter's variety. I think it's like winter's keeper or something like that

And they are able to take cooler soils, cooler nights, cooler days, and ultimately cooler evenings

So, or late falls. And because of that, I can put them in May long, before May long, when the soil is actually pretty cold still

They will germinate and then they will take light frost if there is any after they germinate

and into fall if the voles didn't get to them I could have left them in even longer and I would

have expected these to be even larger because it's really nice and warm outside very nice and sunny

and it's going to probably continue to do that for another two weeks and you'd be shocked how

quick these can get. Now bigger veg does kind of get a different taste to it so the more this

woodiness kind of spreads down it will it alter the taste so you know in some cases if this is for fresh eats you want to maybe harvest them a little bit sooner So variety here is key The variety that I linked down below will work great for anyone in like a

colder climate. If you're not in a cold climate I don't know what variety you should use. I can't

really recommend that because I've never tried that so I would never tell you to get something that I don't know if it works or not but I would assume you'd want more of a bolt resistant variety

or you could plant these cooler crop versions or cooler seed versions in the spring or in your fall

to go to spring as like a winter crop type thing because you guys are able to continuous crop where

you are. So variety is number one. The second thing is thinning. So if you guys watch my video

on my secrets to thinning, I do do my thinning a little bit different. So I seed pretty thick

for beets and carrots and then for my thinning i actually physically go in and pick the carrots as

they're going throughout the entire season so by the end of the season they're fully thin probably

and beginning of august they're fully thinned but from june and july i am literally just eating baby

carrots and baby beets because a they taste good and thinning i find to be pretty wasteful so it's

great way to still get these big huge carrots or beads without just decimating you know 50 of your

crop because depending on how heavily you seed them it may or may not be worse or um it may or

may not be 50 or or more percent you actually end up having to remove but when i get to eat it i mean

benefits right now the other thing you could do is get pelletized carrot seeds in particular so

pelletized seeds are a clay base seed they look like they're funky colors and

they're treated they're not it's literally just clay with seeds inside rolled up into balls so the reason for that is because you can visually just

see how the the seeds are spaced out so then you don't have to thin as much if

that's that's an option for you but thinning is key now besides thinning is

reducing competition in general you want to make sure that the competition is

like next to none this means for the first month you need to weed like a

crazy person between the rows between the plants zero competition except for

the carrots or the beets whatever the root vegetable is now when we seed these

we're going to make a mound and this is very important in this me or may not

anger some people but you need to till now for I before you cut my head off

off tillage is when we are manipulating the ground at all at all if you're manipulating the ground

you are tilling the only true no-till practice would be broadcasting seed and i don't know many

gardeners that actually do that so you can do a low till method which i've showed you guys how to

do which is simply a broad fork or a pitchfork in the ground and you're going to lift the soil or

you can rototill it or double dig it with a shovel but you need it

fluffy very fluffy do not walk on that when it is wet do not walk on it in the

area that you are seating and if you do walk use like a two by four or some way to walk across

the soil that will evenly distribute your weight so you're not stomping down in specific areas that is so

important and if you have to go in the garden to weed or to do anything

It's the two by four and it's bone freaking dry. Do not walk on wet soil whatsoever

And this goes for the lawn people. This goes for the preo people The if you doing flowers do not walk on your garden when it wet weed before you wet the soil harvest before you wet the soil plant before you wet

the soil do not walk on wet soil it is it literally will just crush your pore

space even natural pore space that is developed in a no-till scenario with

like roots and just natural aggregation of the soil you step on it you're gonna

squash your pore space and it's a game over for you know even getting close to

something like this so I like to make a mound and I'll just do a row mound and

I'm going to seed into said mound and then when I weed I'm going to weed into

the rows I'm going to pull it up into that mound and I'm almost going to mound

similar to what we do with potatoes the actual little seedlings themselves what

this is going to do is it's going to make sure that we're not completely relying on the soil structure to ensure that the carrots or the beet gets big and

and we're going to allow that carrot or that beet to grow inside of kind of a floof mound and the

mound doesn't have to be big it only has to be about a foot or two wide but ultimately that's

going to help your root vegetables enormously so this is very important and that is nutrients now

i don't add nutrients much anyways to any of my gardens i kind of just let them do their stuff

naturally when i add compost or manures i add very little i do not add much maybe an inch if

you want to look at composting and the way to compost properly or to add compost properly

if i was to take this beet and the leaves and i was to dry it down grind it up and compost it

how much of this do you think is going to be left like weight wise amount wise if you have a

dehydrator or a freeze dryer you guys know how quickly what looks to be like a lot of produce

basically becomes nothing i literally just did a whole bunch of cauliflower scraps in the

dehydrator because first of all scrappy cooking is like the best way to make different types of like

sauces or to make different types of powders anyways so i did cauliflower stems leaves and

then kale stems as well it's just literally scraps that i'm using in my broth that i then

anyways so i dehydrate them think of that it's not going to be much and that's how much you need to

re-add if you're adding inches or inch or two inches every single year or twice a year you're

over fertilizing your garden by a lot the soil is pretty darn good at doing its own thing so

i do not over fertilize if you are using a lot of compost or a lot of manure or a lot of synthetic

fertilizer in your garden you are probably 100 i can almost guarantee you because of the number

of soil samples that you guys have actually sent me the nitrogen levels in those tests are like

through the roof. I can tell when you're adding too much compost or when you're doing a no dig

straight compost setup. I know when you're doing it because it's so obvious from your soil test

So I, you have too much nitrogen, you get more disease, more pests because you have this nice

luscious green growth. It's very easy to infect and it will reduce your root volume because that

plant is going to be like, there's a ton of free nitrogen here. Let's put it all in the leaves

If I going to put much into the roots roots are best grown with phosphorus or potassium and not as much nitrogen now if we using less fertilizer or we going organic as possible with no or little very

little synthetic and I have nothing against synthetics I really don't care what you do I use synthetics so if you these ones are grown organically though

so if you do grow them in a setup with nothing added you want to make sure you

water water water water water the only way this plant is going to be able to

get this size is with water for a few reasons there's a lot of water content

just in this beat on its own secondly the actual nutrients can't get into the

these root hairs or this root system without water that's literally the

mechanism for the nutrients to get into the plant to grow something of this size

so you need to water now you need a good draining soil and that's why we keep it

nice and loose the entire year and we'll get into that here in a little bit if

you have a soil that pools or you're seeing pooling you may need to consider

watering twice a day once in the morning once in the afternoon 15 minutes at a

time or you can do once every two days very thoroughly once every three days

very very thoroughly we want a continuous supply of water in that soil

that is not pooling it's just moisture that's what we need there which brings

me into my last and final tip and I do think this is a game changer for the

potatoes the beets and the carrots is taking a pitchfork to that mound and

doing a little lift so what I like to do is I take the pitchfork I will put it

around the plant nowhere near the plants roots literally surrounding the ground

around it I'll stick it in and I'll give it light little tugs around the if it's

a mound in a circle if not in a row and I won't go between the rows but I will

just go down the row both sides nice tiny little lifts and again this is just

going to help to fix any compaction that may have happened because you were in a

rationing did run across the garden or you have animals which is my issue I

have animals that compact it or you have heavy rains or just a heavier soil in

general that's just not very well aggregated and it's kind of homogeneous

in nature you can give it that tiny little lift and it's going to make a big

big difference it's going to increase microbe activity it's going to increase

aeration and ultimately just the floof of it will allow for these roots to do

their job now roots by all means on plants can break through cement I mean

roots are very very tough tough plants so I wouldn't chalk up the loose soil as

the big benefit here I think it's combination of all the the choices that

I've made to actually perfect this but ultimately that is what you want to do

so if you want to grow giant of veg seed selection soil prep soil maintenance

throughout the entire year in the form of not fertilizing with too much nitrogen not walking on

it while it's wet and giving it a little floof mid-year and then ultimately making sure that the

darn voles don't get at your beets because that's going to be a nightmare to process now it's going

to be good anyways i want to thank you guys so much for watching if you enjoyed this video be

sure to give it a thumbs up hit that subscribe button and let me know in the comments down below

you've ever grown giant vans send me your photos on Instagram I'd be very

excited to see that and be sure to share this video because sharing is caring and

I will talk to you guys next time bye