Our New Tomato Method Is Actually Working

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Good morning, everybody. How you doing today? My name's Andrew. I'm Matt.

[00:00:04]>> I'm Gavin.

[00:00:05]>> I'm Joel.

[00:00:05]>> I'm Kevin.

[00:00:06]>> I'm Lauren.

[00:00:06]>> I'm Kelly. I'm Bonnie. I'm Addie.

[00:00:10]And we're some of the Veggie Boys. And girls.

[00:00:13]And we'd like to thank you for stopping by. If you're new here, please consider subscribing because we can grow a lot of stuff on the farm, but one thing we can't grow is this channel without your help.

[00:01:08]Oh, ho ho. Check it out. Have you seen it? Yeah.

[00:01:25]Good morning, girls. Good morning.

[00:01:35]We're having a great start to the morning. We got the farm market all set up and ready to go. We've had a busy past few days on the farm. Went for a quick walk through the greenhouses.

[00:01:43]They're looking much emptier, which I'm happy about. And now I've moved on to my next thing, which is getting the animals all taken care of. Chickens are now fed.

[00:01:51]I just have some eggs that need to be collected, and then I have to grade some eggs.

[00:02:20]>> [screaming] >> PRETTY EXPENSIVE LADDER.

[00:03:49]WE'VE NOW I'VE THE ANIMALS ALL TAKEN care of and I was able to get all the eggs graded. I did get two baskets collected, so we'll have to grade those later on, but for now we've got two beautiful boxes. The next thing we have to do is go for a quick walk through the greenhouse and I do need to fill you guys in on what's happening in greenhouse number six. The tomatoes look beautiful. That's the first thing I'll say, but we we did some more work in there.

[00:04:11]They are magnificent. All right. I'll tell you why.

[00:04:25]I wanted to come up into the germination greenhouse and check on everything that we have up here. I didn't think it was going to be too hot today. Our high temperature is in the low 50s. However, moving into next week our temperatures are going to shoot up into the 80s and pushing into the 90s, which is kind of crazy at this point in the year. Some stuff that will definitely have to be moved out is this cabbage. This is some late season cabbage that we seeded for ourselves. Right here we have some blue vantage cabbage, very very reliable cabbage that we've talked about a lot.

[00:04:52]And then a little further up we have some broccoli. Imperial broccoli. Again, very reliable and one of my favorite varieties. Moving down a little bit further, we have some jalapenos that we seeded. This variety is called sound wave. New variety that we're trying out.

[00:05:06]The seed was sent to us. I'm excited about it. And some other things we have in here. We have bell peppers. This is revolution. Really wonderful bell pepper variety, one of my favorites. We planted a lot of this. And a little further down we have some Italian sweet peppers. In the upcoming week where it's going to be a lot warmer, we're going to make a lot of progress in the fields and hopefully even get some stuff transplanted out in the fields. I'll be sure to update you.

[00:05:29]I just wanted to show you how things were growing in the germination greenhouse. We'll go for a quick walk through the big greenhouse and then move down over the hill and tell you exactly what I'm excited about.

[00:05:46]That is warm. know. I want I want to All the way up at the top of the greenhouse, we got a lot of our baskets moved out. And then over here, a lot of our large tomato baskets, we sold off a ton of them. We've been opening up some space and putting some smaller tomatoes up there.

[00:06:11]Now, it's obvious to see greenhouse number four is starting to empty out.

[00:06:15]We've moved a lot of baskets, but not only have we moved a lot of baskets, you can see a lot of the larger plants that are here are now gone. We had many customers show up and pick up all different types of plants. And then over here is our next planting of tomatoes, and we started to take some of these plants up for sale. And it gets even bigger than that because not only have we been selling a lot of tomato plants, we've also been transplanting because look at the size of these. A lot smaller, and that's because we needed to have a whole another planting ready to go. And one of the most exciting things exciting things we had to do over the past week was try and find enough room to move more stuff that we had transplanted into the lower greenhouses.

[00:06:54]You can see right here, this is a whole bunch of peppers that we had seeded not that long ago. The girls transplanted them, and now we had to find room for them. So, this is where it gets a little difficult, too, because when we're trying to sell plants, we have to run all over the place to find them because right here is some more peppers. And then over here is even more peppers.

[00:07:11]Lots of peppers.

[00:07:15]It feels so weird to see greenhouse number five emptied out like this.

[00:07:18]Greenhouse number five is one of my favorite greenhouses to go into, mostly because a lot of the stuff that we're going to be transplanting out in the field is found in greenhouse number five. Along that far wall is a lot a lot of peppers that we're going to be transplanting. Starting all the way up there to here is all part of our first planting of peppers. And what's cool is here in the middle section, this right here is all peppers that are going to be for customers that they can plant at home themselves. Not only do we plant a lot, but the people in the local area plant a lot a lot as well. In here you'll see even more peppers that These are our peppers. When they're in these 98-cell trays, that's ours. And up here is some more stuff that's just for us. Right here in the middle we have pickling cucumbers, regular cucumbers, zucchini. We have some watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew.

[00:08:08]And we also have our tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes that we're going to be transplanting sooner rather than later.

[00:08:13]And some of this stuff may look a little on the small side, but you have to remember, our temperatures are going to be jumping up into the upper 80s. Things are going to be growing really fast.

[00:08:24]Now, this really was the thing I was most excited to talk about today, our tomatoes that we have down in greenhouse number six. Now, because I was already so excited, I showed you that we have a little tomato growing earlier on in the video, but right here this one plant, it's starting to produce tomatoes. And I'm sure if I looked around a little bit harder, I could find another one. For those that have been following along with this tomato journey, you will also notice we went through and added our second row of string. Not sure if it was 100% necessary, maybe we're getting ahead of the game, but it seems to have helped out a few of these plants quite a bit. They're starting to lean over. Now, the plants that we have in here are Red Ace. The plant growth can get pretty aggressive with those, but one of the reasons why we went with Red Ace tomatoes was because the plant has great structure, it has great strength, and one of the last things we have to worry about is the plant snapping off. Now, with the extra progress being made, we have noticed that the plants are growing pretty wide, which is good for us. We've also had quite a few suggestions in the previous videos that we've done. Uh some people talked about doing strings from the ceiling, which is something we thought about doing. And maybe it's because this greenhouse was full of hanging baskets, we didn't really want to do that. But in the future, we could also try it out to see how it works for us. And we even have something else in the works for greenhouse number six, something brand new. We had a good friend of ours, a customer, someone that watches the videos, came to the farm market, and they showed us something that they've been working on at their farm, and it got us really inspired. So, in the upcoming weeks, we might have something big being added into greenhouse number six. Let me know down in the comments what you think we're going to be adding to greenhouse number six.

[00:09:59]It's going to be something we definitely have never done before. But, in the spirit of updates, I just wanted to show you the tomatoes have been growing really, really good. My plan is to go out to the fields today and also look at some of the stuff we have out there.

[00:10:13]One other thing we were able to do is get automatic water lines hooked up to these tomatoes. Anything we can do to save ourselves a little more time is super beneficial, especially because this is going to become an everyday thing. But, you can see we've got drip lines connected to every single pot. All I have to say is I'm very proud of how the tomatoes look, and if they continue to grow this way, I think we're going to be harvesting in no time. I know with the hot, hot temperatures coming up, these things are probably going to explode. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

[00:10:56]You want me to take those? I was just going to put them all in the back.

[00:10:59]>> Thank you. Yep. Appreciate it. You're welcome.

[00:11:21]What a beautiful view.

[00:11:41]>> Wow, this is a beautiful view. My dad went through yesterday and he actually got a lot of the biodegradable mulch pulled off of the sweet corn that's growing here. Some of this stuff is still a little on the young side. You can see right here. We've got some beautiful growth, but it's not quite ready to have the mulch taken off.

[00:11:59]Although by the end of the week it will.

[00:12:01]Now, there are some weeds here, but that's to be expected especially when everything else has been so cold and under that bio mulch it's been warm.

[00:12:08]But, what you can see is some beautiful corn that at times had its struggle, but is growing out and starting to get some really nice size to it. All together, we've got a lot of sweet corn that's planted here and we've done it in plantings. So, we've got some early sweet corn right here and then we've got another planting of early sweet corn right here. I wanted to show everyone that we were able to get out here and get some of the bio mulch ripped up. We did have to help the sweet corn out. It was growing a little too fast. I don't like that we have weeds in here, but as I had just mentioned there's not too much you can do about that. Thankfully, the sweet corn is plenty established and I think it's going to be just fine. I don't like the fact that weeds are taking some nutrients away from our corn, but it is what it is. The corn's going to be just fine and we're going to have beautiful ears. I almost feel like this corn under the rest of the bio mulch could be opened up just with how warm it's going to be, but the temperature is still going to drop a little bit tonight and some of this younger more tender corn it might struggle with it. It does make me very happy to see strips of green out through the field and know that we've got early sweet corn planted there and soon, very soon, we'll be harvesting. Now, we've already had a few chances to look at the sweet corn. That's not one of the most exciting things I wanted to show you guys. The exciting thing is we got to drive to the other end of the field to show you that.

[00:13:36]We did have some sweet corn that we had planted with the conventional planter there, and that's starting to poke out of the soil, so that's comforting.

[00:13:43]That's really good news.

[00:13:52]Now, when I was out here cultivating the other day, the other thing that really has to be cultivated is potatoes, but the potatoes were not up enough to be cultivated. Unfortunately, we are having some weeds that are starting to sprout up here, and that's not good news. We want to get this cleaned up. The only issue is our potatoes weren't even out of the soil yet, so I can't cultivate because I can't see where I'm going. But now that we've had some time, look at this. Our early potatoes, yes, the early ones, are now starting to pop out of the soil. And as I stand here and I look out through the field, I can see just where the early potatoes are coming out of the soil, but it's comforting because it means that the potatoes are actually growing. And from what I'm seeing, they have a great stand. I know some of you guys are like, "Look at all the rocks in that field." This This is not bad. This is not a lot of rocks. I I can show you a lot of rocks. Probably by the end of next week, these potatoes will be big enough to cultivate, and I will come through and cultivate these. And with that warm weather really starting to take off, hopefully the rest of the potatoes will be up as well, and we can get them cultivated. This is another thing that's giving us some great signs.

[00:14:57]The fact that we're starting to see the potatoes sprouting out of the soil, even though temperatures have been cooler, it's just another one of those big signs that spring is here and summer is following right behind.

[00:15:09]I went for a drive past the peas this morning and past all the cold crops. I want to go over and go for a quick walk through the fields, just make sure nothing is having any troubles, and make sure our cultivating did the job.

[00:15:27]I have to say it looks like we've got some more growth with the peas and dad was very proud of me for not burying them. He didn't know if I was going to do that or not. Not because I don't know how to cultivate, he just knows how I feel about the peas. You can see the peas that we have in front of us, they have grown like crazy. Now, these also were affected a little bit by some colder weather, but it does not seem to be stunting them too much. From where we had cultivated, it looks like we ripped up a lot of that grass that was here and the peas have grown probably from the extra loosened up soil allowing the roots to spread out a little bit more and probably the fact that we got absolutely dumped on with rain last night. We had a crazy thunderstorm, which makes me feel even better about getting all this stuff cultivated. If this was not cultivated, a lot of that rain would have just ran right off.

[00:16:17]However, because it was cultivated, it allowed the rain to soak down in benefiting these crops like crazy.

[00:16:25]Moving on a little further from where our peas are, we have lettuce that has been transplanted right here and strawberries in these first two rows.

[00:16:33]They seem to be doing really well. I didn't pull any out of the ground, so that's good. And as we move into the field a little bit more, here we have some kohlrabi that had been transplanted. Now, kohlrabi is very popular not only because my kids love to eat it, but the people in the local area like it and when you're cultivating kohlrabi, you have to go a little bit slower because you don't want to pile any dirt on top of it. Just a little bit of soil around the base of the plant as the kohlrabi starts to create that head or that bulb. If you have soil that sits on it, it can cause it to rot, which is really bad. It's not like the cabbage and the broccoli where we're trying to throw soil underneath the plant. We're just trying to break up those weeds because if it we do have to go a little bit slower. But moving on to the broccoli and the cabbage, it's plain to see that we've got some beautiful growth. The fact you can see strips of green down through the field makes me very happy. This is definitely a picture, and it's nice to see that the plants are finally coming out of the transplant shock, and they are starting to get new growth. For example, this cabbage, it's plain to see new growth towards the center of the plant, and every single plant that we put in the soil is like that. Now, with the different varieties of cabbage that we've transplanted here, they are going to grow at different rates, but now that we're seeing new growth on every plant, it's something that's telling us that the plants have rooted correctly, and that they're accepting a lot of the moisture that's in the soil. Because I look so forward to this every single year as the plants start to grow a little bit more, I like to get out here in the fields and have a walk around.

[00:18:02]Make sure we're not dealing with any pest pressure, making sure that the cultivating went well. But, if there's anything you guys would like me to touch on, please let me know down in the comments. I know a lot of you have questions about the amount of rocks in the field. I have to say this section of the field over here not near as rocky as this end of the field, so it'll be a nice little experiment to see how everything grows comparatively. The soil that drains a little bit more because there's more rocks, as opposed to this soil over here that has less rocks and is probably a lot nicer on the equipment. But, like I said, please let me know down in the comments what you would like to know about, what you would like to see. I just can't get over how nice everything looks. It makes me very happy. It's one of those things as a farmer that you don't take for granted.

[00:18:43]When the crops look good, when the field look good, you feel good.

[00:18:59]And you probably heard me mention that we got hit with a bad storm last night.

[00:19:03]I have not heard thunder like that in a really long time. I had a headset on, and I was talking to one of my friends, and my house was shaking, and I couldn't figure out what was going on until I realized it was thundering that hard.

[00:19:14]And that can be a little scary, but the fact that the lightning adds a lot of nitrogen into the atmosphere that benefits the crops, it makes me appreciate a good thunderstorm.

[00:19:36]For lunch [laughter] today, it looks like we are having taco salads.

[00:19:47]The afternoon has kept us pretty busy.

[00:19:49]One big job we've been working on, delivering seed. Another job, cleaning out greenhouses, moving a lot of hanging baskets. It has been busy. I am now home and LOOK WHO WE'VE GOT HERE. HOW ARE YOU, LILY?

[00:20:01]OH, HI CALI. YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL. I like your dress. OH, COME HERE, RONNIE. I LIKE YOUR LITTLE PANTS. DO YOU HAVE A SPIDER-MAN [crying] COWBOY? He's a Spider-Man cowboy. Uh, SHOW ME A JUMP.

[00:20:14]WOW.

[00:20:15]>> IS HE COVERED IN MUD? He's not covered IN MUD. HE'S GOT CAMO PANTS ON. WELL, NOW that I'm home, WE'RE GOING TO GET READY TO END THE VIDEO. I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR WATCHING and I will see you next time. BYE-BYE.

[00:20:29]BYE-BYE.

[00:20:30]BYE-BYE.