 Hi there and welcome to Little Garden on the Prairies. So in today's video I'm going to give you an update of how my garden planting is going. This year I've gone to about 95% container gardening. So I have things planted all the way from radishes, beans, all the way up to corn and potatoes all in containers of various sizes. So here in growing zone 3 on the Saskatchewan Prairies we have a very short growing period of about 110 days without frost. So it can be a challenge growing in a short time frame like that, especially with vegetables and fruit that has a longer maturity date such as corn and watermelons and stuff like that. So if you have cool springs with the late frosts or cold falls with early frosts, it could really do a lot of damage to your gardening season. So this spring has been a challenge here for gardening outdoors. We've had a very cool spring and lots of wind. It just seems like the wind never stops blowing. We haven't had very much rain. We're concerned about, you know, going into another season of drought here on the Prairies. Today as I'm filming this on June 2nd, they are calling for a risk of frost tonight. So I have everything all planted, my tomatoes and peppers and everything are all planted up. So now I have to think about how I can protect them from these late frosts. So first of all I'm going to just show you all the different planting that I have done in my containers and then at the end of this video I will do an update. Some of these have been planted a couple weeks ago, show you how they are doing and then I can also show you how I plan to protect my plants over the next couple of nights while there is a risk of frost. So this is what I would like to call my redneck raised garden bed. So I've converted my raised garden beds this spring into all containers. Just to make it a little easier for gardening I have a whole large supply of these black 30 gallon tubs. So I have converted this into six on each side. So in these two tubs here is where I plan to start my cucumbers. So these cucumbers are going to grow up this trellising system that I have. So if you're like me it's hard to just pick one or two types of cucumbers to plant. So I have picked actually four different kinds here that I'm going to try out this year. A couple of them are like a English type cucumber so that you can eat the skin. So it's the Perseus hybrid and the quarantine. And then I have a straight eight. These are some of my one of my favorite cucumbers to grow. They're ones you have to peel but they're so good in sandwiches. And then I have a national pickling which also we will just eat fresh. I'm not a pickler so far so don't plan on pickling any of these. If you've been watching some of my other videos you'll see that I had started a couple cucumbers indoors this earlier this winter. And that was the cucumber melon and the lemon cucumber. I just wanted to try a couple different exotic type cucumbers I call them and see how they do. So I have them growing in pots and that's how they're going to live in my garden this year. So we'll see how those make out as well. So on this side and these two containers I'm going to do pole beans and some dwarf bush beans. So the pole beans of course will go closer to this trellis. I have a nice arch trellis here that the pole beans can grow up and then on the inside of the container I will plant some of the dwarf bush beans. So we should be able to get a good crop of beans in a very small area here that hopefully will reach this trellising once they get growing. And of course after a good watering I always mulch my containers. It helps retain moisture kind of gives them a little protection during germination. Okay so container corn. This is something that I'm tempting for the second time. Two years ago I tried to grow corn in containers and had a bit of a harvest not very much. Last year I tried growing corn directly under straw just like I do with my potatoes kind of the roof stout method and it only got like this big. So I'm always never had really good success with corn. So I keep trying it every year just for different techniques to see if I can actually get a good harvest. They do have a long growing season so if we have early frosts or anything like that which can happen sometimes you know the corn crops don't do so well. But I think part of my problem was I didn't have it in a location that was getting enough sunlight. So I'm going to go back to the container method here. So I have the three containers set up like this so that they will you know make a nice little bush of corn. They need to have a lot of wind and be able to kind of brush off of each other to pollinate and so I'm hoping that this setup will work. I think it's probably facing the east and the south. There should be at least six to eight hours of sunlight you know a little bit more in the springtime right now. I also started it from seed indoors about a month ago just to try and give it a bit of a more of a jump start. So I have here 20 plants. I'm going to just kind of spread them out amongst the three containers. So I set up these containers with a bunch of on the bottom unfinished compost or partially finished compost some you know twigs branches stuff that I always use for filler and then I the soil that it will be growing in is compost and mixed with some pure light and I also put in some blood meal which apparently is supposed to be good for corn. So hopefully that is enough nutrients to get this corn going. So I'm going to just plant it all up now. So we'll see how easily these come out of the containers. I'm not sure. I got a double one here. We'll see what kind of a root system these have. It's pretty good. You can see I'm not to lose it here. It's got nice roots going there. As you can see I got two here. I'm not sure if I should try. We'll see how they separate if that. I'm not sure what their roots are like for separating. I don't seem to really... I'll just shake the dirt off and that makes it a little bit easier. So you can see then they separated. We'll see how they transplanted. Hopefully I didn't shock them too much. I have 22 corn plants in these containers right now and I am going to mulch them with some grass clippings and leaves. These are nicely broken down leaves so they will act as a good you know mulch right now and then you know add some good nutrients to the soil here as well. And it's a little easier to work around the corn or plants like this that are already growing than using the straw. So I got all my squashes planted up in containers. I have five that I'm trying out here. These are all started from seed indoors. Again they seem a little you know weak when you're transplanting them. Their roots weren't that big so I'm hoping that they transplant okay. So I got a sweet dumpling, spaghetti, sunburst which is also known as the patty cake squash I think. I can't remember. Zucchini squash and Burgess. And the Burgess squash is a winter one that I bought from a local company here at Air Loom Seed and they said that it's kind of got the flavor of a sweet potato so I was really excited to try that because I love sweet potatoes and they're really hard to grow here in our growing zone because they have such a long growing season. So a squash that tastes like a sweet potato will be almost as good. So I'm going to kind of try to put these containers on a bit of an angle. I want the squashes to kind of grow out of the containers here onto the ground and then they have lots of space to spread out. So hopefully this works out good. Okay so I have my tomatoes placed where I am planning to plant them in. I've got my two cherry size indeterminants going up this larger trellis. I kind of think that they are going to grow taller than the other two indeterminate ones that I have. So that is the white tomasal and the Palestinian. So they'll be growing up this side and then I got a bush, beef steak and a roadster. These are both determinate tomatoes so I am going to kind of plant them in the center area of this garden bed and figure out some kind of a trellising system after. And I think I'll just add some basil and some other companion plants just in some of the space that's going to be left here in these four containers. So let's dig them in. So this is the one that I'm most excited about. This is the golden cherry and I tried growing this or I did grow this a couple years ago and had the best sweetest yellow cherry sized tomatoes on it. So I'm hoping this one turns out as well and I'll be sure to save seeds if it works out good. So I'm going to be just trying to bury this as deep as I can. I'm going to remove some of these smaller stems from the bottom. And if I can get a hole deep enough I will try to bury as much as the stem as I can so all of these little tiny hairs will form roots and make a really nice strong plant. It's got a pretty nice strong root ball here. I may just plant it on a bit of an angle too so that it can get more of that stem buried as much as I can. So I've got it set so that it's already able to attach and start climbing up this trellising here. So this is where the peppers and eggplants are going to be going and as mentioned in previous videos I forgot to mark my peppers so I don't know which ones are which. So these are mystery peppers that we will find out at the end of the season what kind they were. I do know that I did plant up some paprika peppers, some king of the north green peppers, mini bell pepper, and some sweet Italian frying peppers. I'm also going to be growing two eggplants. I started from seed that I have never grown eggplant before. I don't think I've even eaten eggplant before so this is my new experiment in the garden for this year. The tomatoes are all planted. We've got the two indeterminants in the middle here with some steaks. I'm hoping I can just kind of train them to grow up with some string or small pieces of rags and the indeterminate ones should climb up this cattle panel wiring and they should all be happy and have enough space I hope. So my first redneck raised garden bed is pretty much all planted up now with the exception of filling in a few of these spaces with some companion plants like maybe some basil or not sure what else but we'll see. So the final thing that I planted up into my containers here in my raised garden beds was my onions. I had three different kinds of onions that I started from seed and I probably ended up with like well over a hundred onions to plant out so I had filled up my two tubs here at the front of this bed with onions. I had a couple baby Roma tomatoes that I started from seed that I forgot about so I'm planting those in the middle of these containers along with the onions and then with all the onions that I still had left over after these two tubs I have spread them out amongst my cucumber barrels, my peppers and tomatoes. Onions make a great companion plant with the nightshades and also with the cucumbers. Their strong scent is known to deter pests away from those other plants such as your tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers. So hopefully the onions will do their job, protect my other plants and I'm very hopeful to see some big bulbs this year. So here in the back end of my garden I have my container potatoes and squashes planted up and my potatoes in the containers are just going crazy here. They are popping through the straw. We planted these about three weeks ago. These are our fingerling potato. So as you can see they are shooting out some really nice green leaves right now. I also planted some in this pail in dirt so I covered them up with dirt. I haven't seen any sprouting action yet there and then I have some growing in this grow bag which I also have not seen any sprouting from yet. So for some reason the ones growing in these large containers under straw are doing the best right now and here are the squashes about a one to two weeks after planting and they are all taking off okay. Nothing has died. They seem to be shooting out new leaves so that's great. The zucchini is really growing good. My sunburst, spaghetti and sweet dumplings. So to deal with the predicted frost warning tonight I will just use this sheet and cover them up. So the peas that I have planted in these grow bags are all doing very well and they are more tolerant to the frosts so I'm not too concerned about them but I do have a sheet here that I can cover them up with tonight just in case. So I'm very happy with how the corn is progressing here. It's been over a week since I transplanted these. These were seedlings that I started indoors and every one of them seems to be alive and growing and thriving and I'm very hopeful that this is going to be a good spot and a good year for corn. So the tomatoes and peppers are the two most probably sensitive plants that we have growing here that are not tolerant to cold weather at all. So what I've done here is I've built these little cozies out of extra-large freezer bags. So I put them over top of some tomato cages just clipped them with some clothespans and created little mini greenhouses that I'm going to leave on here probably for the next week or so. Tomatoes and peppers prefer the evening temperatures to be you know above 10 degrees Celsius which we have not been getting this last week or so. I'm really hopeful that things are going to start warming up now that we are heading into June and for the peppers and the eggplants I had these small little covers that I purchased at the dollar store that worked good to cover up each of these plants right now. Again I think the little greenhouse effect, the humidity and the protection from the wind and frost should probably work well for these plants and they should do fine. So along with the onions that I've companion planted in amongst the tomatoes I also have put in some tiny marigolds and the stir chums that I started from seed. They fit nicely in the front of these raised garden beds. Hopefully these will deter pests from the vegetables. So another problem I have with this coming frost is that we are planning to take a trip up north to our lake in northern Saskatchewan for a few days of fishing. This is always a problem for me because the best fishing is always the first week of June and this always conflicts with when I'm trying to get my garden planted so it's a little bit stressful trying to make sure that everything is safe and well watered for those few days while I'm gone. So I do have somebody coming to check on my plants and water them. Because we have a couple nights where there's a risk of frost while we'll be away I don't really want to have to ask people to cover and uncover my plants so I'm going to just take more of my straw and bury everything as good as I can give them some protection and hopefully that does the job. So I hope you enjoyed watching my garden update and I will keep you posted on how everything makes out over the next few days of cold evening temperatures. So I'd appreciate it if you hit that like button and I would love to hear your comments below and if you haven't already done so please subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss out on future videos coming to my channel. Thanks for watching.