it is April my friends the sun is shining my pockets are loaded with seeds and no matter where you live there is something that you can get going in the garden right now so in this video myself jacqu Meg and new epic Gardener Aaron from impatient Gardener are going to give you our best picks for what to plant and how to grow incredible crops in April this video is sponsored by Shopify but more on that later let's get into it my very first pick is actually a grass yes it's a grass that's where it came from from we just selected it over many thousands of years to grow into something absolutely delicious used in almost every processed food product out there but I don't want to eat it that way I want to eat it fresh and of course I am talking about corn corn is actually quite a confusing plant to learn how to grow it took me a little bit to get it but last year and the years prior I've had some absolutely incredible Corn Harvest we did a whole video on how to grow it from seed to harvest you can check out but here's what you really need to know there are three major categories of corn this one is called glass gem it's what's known as a flint corn it's not really for eating it's more of an ornamental but man is it ever ornamental it's one of the most beautiful corn varieties that I have ever grown but then let's say you want to go to the movies you want to bring your own popcorn you can actually do that so this is a very classic variety has kind of a little bit of a technical name robust pop R400 Mr but this is one of the only commercially viable what's called popping corn so what you would do with this one is grow it out and then you would let it actually dry grab all those kernels and use it as a popcorn but most of us are going to be wanting to grow what is called sweet corn couple varieties here that are fun honey and cream and sugar baby there's also butter gold the varieties are actually pretty endless here but corn needs to be planted no matter which one you grow in a very specific way while you can transplant corn it is often recommended and we recommend to direct sew it in the ground in what are called planting blocks so what you can do with corn is clear out at least a 4x4 square foot area and about every 6 to 12 inches pop your finger down about an inch drop in one or two kernels of corn or corn seeds and then continue that planting out and when it comes up they're going to come all up in a block planting style and the reason that's so important is because corn is what's called a wind pollinated plant what you'll have up at the top are the tassels that's the male part of the plant and they'll all kind of brush other in the wind and that pollen will fall down onto the ear of corn which has these little weird things coming out called silks those silks are the female part of the plant and a grain of pollen has to fall down go into each silk down into the ear of corn and actually fertilize every single individual kernel so when you get a corn that you've grown at home and it has like spotty amounts of kernels it's not like a perfect looking ear of corn that's because not enough pollen was hitting those silks and planting it in a block is the easiest way to ensure that you get a good harvest In The Heat Of Summer I always look forward to a single Harvest and that is the crispy cool delicious cucumber now cucumbers are a very interesting plant that can actually be used as a companion plant but a lot of people struggle to grow them just because they don't have the space or the right variety selection so today I'm going to show you three different varieties that will work no matter what your growing context is the first variety is called tasty green this is a Japanese style cucumber the ones that are long and slender you don't need to peel them they're perfect for a salad now I'm standing here next to my trell system when you're growing cucumbers they tend to want to vine actually most of them will Vine except for one special one I'll show you next so you want to make sure you have vertical lines for the cucumber plant to actually climb since it has big seeds whenever a seed is larger than say like a tomato seed something like that I don't mind direct sewing these so all I'm going to do is take two seeds I'm just going to go straight into the ground underneath the trellis where I'm expecting it to climb you don't have to do anything special you could literally just press them in braid them with a little bit of soil and off you go I should be getting cucumbers in a few months but if you're space limited you're going to want to actually grow the spacemaster 80 the reason why I like spacemaster 80 so much is that it's an extremely compact plant this plant will only get like 2 to 3 ft tall so it's really wonderful for things like containers or space limited Garden maybe you have a couple raised beds and you don't want the cucumber plant to take over everything so I'm going to go in with three seeds here and just do a little triangle and at the end of the day I'm going to select it down to one this is a 10 gallon bag so maybe I could even get away with with two in this one and that's it the nice thing about this is that you don't have to build a whole trell system you could use something as simple as literally a tomato cage usually these things are honestly useless in my my experience but for a cucumber like this this is actually the perfect size containment you'll get plenty of cucumbers you can use for salads pickling or whatever else you really want if you're like Cosmo and you're trying to beat the heat The Armenian cucumber is perfect for you it'll produce cucumbers in any sort of heat in the middle of summer it doesn't matter it's not technically a cucumber but it eats just like one so this is a great pick if you live in a warm Zone oh don't mind me I'm just over here finishing up the last of my homegrown peanut butter from my homegrown peanuts delicious it's come to my attention that somebody needs to show the Epic audience what a real peanut Harvest looks like and sadly that's not going to be Kevin or jacqu no offense guys peanuts are a really interesting plants cuz they're not even nuts at all and there was a time not that long ago that I thought peanuts grew trees and it wasn't until I started researching how to grow them myself that I discovered that they're actually legumes that grow underground and I used to be embarrassed to admit that but then I realized it's a really common misconception so if you also thought that peanuts grow on trees don't feel bad peanuts thrive in warm climates with long growing Seasons which is why they do so well here in North Carolina and depending on the variety they need about 4 to 5 months of frostfree growing conditions and they prefer temperatures between 70 and 90° per so they like it really hot but if you live in a colder climate don't discount them just yet there's a variety called the northern Hardy Valencia that's supposed to be a little bit more coal tolerant and I've heard many stories of success there are many varieties of peanuts and each of them kind of grow a little bit differently so you'll just have to do a little bit of research about what variety is going to grow best in your area but for me I like to grow the variety called fastigata pinstriped or jungle peanut and this is a peanut that originates from Peru and it's one of the oldest varieties around I mainly like to grow it because it's just a beautiful variety these dark purple stripes are just stunning and they're a very like eye-catching thing to grow I always like to grow unique things but it also did extremely well in my area and it made delicious peanut butter I like to start my peanuts by just direct sewing them right into the garden after our last frost but if you're in a colder climate and you want to try growing them you'll want to start them indoors before your last frost and then transplant them out afterwards and when you're growing them you'll notice that they will start off really slowly and you'll kind of think that something might be wrong with them but just be patient because once it gets to the hottest part of the summer and those temperatures that they like they just explode and go crazy and then after 5 months you'll have your own peanuts that you can Harvest and turn into peanut butter you know unless you're Kevin or jacqu one of the hardest things to grow in the garden is actually protein and fat a lot of the things that we grow are a little bit more carbohydrate heavy but I think I found a pick that will really boost your protein intake and that would be eggs this is one of the most gate kept secrets in gardening in fact big egg has been blowing up my phone telling me not to share this but I am a man of the people so what people don't know is that once a chicken produces an egg you can actually plant an egg and get an eggplant that will produce at least 12 eggs for every single egg that you actually plant and so the way I like to do it is I direct sew my eggs so I come in and I like to go at least two eggs deep to make sure that the egg has enough room to produce that root system so I like to go in and then I tend to plant thin side up so I'll kind of put it in just like this cuz of course the egg Sprout is going to come out like this so in we go and then all we're going to do is just cover it up and because the egg has a little bit of inherent water and nutrition in there it's going to put out its egg leaves really easily and you okay that was clearly an April Fool's joke but what is not a joke is the sponsor of this video which would be Shopify believe me when I tell you you would probably not be watching our videos today if it was not for Shopify cuz back in 2019 when I first started offering one of our Flagship products which is our birdies raised beds to all of you guys watching this video I did not know anything about e-commerce and so I slapped up a pretty simple Shopify store and it helped me take care of of all the transactions tracking information launching new products all of the backend work that goes into building an e-commerce site and in fact we love it so much that when we acquired Botanical interest which is our Seed Company one of the very first things we did was transition them from the platform they were on to Shopify in order to improve the shopping experience over on Botanical interest so believe me when I say it is one of the most crucial Tools in our toolbox as we run epic gardening on the business side and if it's something that you've ever thought about doing starting a business online maybe you've got a craft business that you want to sell some product maybe you even have a little seat company that you want to sell or anything that you want to start that requires selling something on the Internet Shopify is wholeheartedly the choice that we absolutely love here at Epic so check the description out you can get a free trial of Shopify and with that let's get on to our next pick now my raised bed vegetable garden is just starting to spring back to life but I am getting ready for all the growing that's going to happen in here for the season and I always Reserve at least half a bed if not more for herbs and one of the herbs that I use the most is parsley and I have to tell you nothing makes me more Angry than having to buy parsley at the store because it's so expensive and it's so good and easy to grow on your own now I grow two kinds of parsley I grow both flat leaf Italian parsley as well as curly parsley but I grow them for two very different reasons now this Garden which I protected with a deer fence for obvious reasons is mostly reserved for edible crops so I will plant two to three Italian parsley plants in this Garden along with other herbs but I grow another parsley I grow the traditional C parsley now this isn't my favorite to eat I much prefer the texture and taste of Italian parsley but the curly parsley is a beautiful plant so I actually grow this primarily as an ornamental but the best thing about parsley is that is an excellent host plant for swallow tail butterflies parsley is not difficult to grow from seed as long as you remember one thing it likes moisture doesn't need a ton of water but it doesn't like to be dry so the first thing I do is soak the seeds it's got kind of a hard seed coat so uh up to 24-Hour soap can help with germination and I actually like to broadcast sew them into a small pot filled with seed starting mix I like this a lot for parsley because since they do germinate a little bit erratically that way I can prick them out as they're ready and I can put them into their own cells then now because I've soaked these seeds I've actually sort of filtered out the water and I put them on a paper towel but it can be really hard when you've soaked seeds because they tend to stick to your fingers instead of to the soil so my little tip is to take a toothpick and you get the tip of it just a little bit wet and then it will pick up the seed for you and that way you can just kind of wipe the seed on the surface of the soil then I simply add a little bit of seed starting mix on top use a little vermiculite on top and then onto the heat mat for these guys as well just cuz it'll speed up germination but it's not as important with these as it is with some other seeds sometimes you got to plant way ahead of time to get a harvest at the time you want in the garden they say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago the second best time is now and that is no different for my pick which would be the pumpkin so some fun varieties for you I had a blast last year growing the Big Max pumpkin trying to grow a giant pumpkin I grew about an 80 pounder using unfortunately my hen gui's body she passed away we buried her in her honor underneath a pumpkin she loved to eat and we grew a pretty big pumpkin but you can grow them small large you can grow a white one this one's called Lumina really cool variety the thing with pumpkins is you really don't want to transplant them if you don't have to you can but you'd rather not but I will show you a way to speed up the germination quite a bit so if you take a look at these seeds they are pretty damn big and what you can do here is you can just clip a very small part of this seed very small and all I've done is just brok in the seed hole slightly allows water to get in more quickly and it will germinate dramatically faster but when I'm talking about growing pumpkins I would always say take about three seeds and plant them in a mound and then put them all right there let them germinate and then just don't don't thin them out at all you want a few Vines for your pumpkin if you're trying to grow a giant you want to isolate to one pumpkin per Vine maximum all the energy goes into that pumpkin but if you're just trying to have fun maybe you're growing the Howen which is a classic Jackal Lantern or Jack belittle which is a smaller Jacko Lantern you can kind of just plant them and let them rip and we will have a full pumpkin guide coming pretty soon by the end of the season most gardeners are literally trying to give this vegetable away to whoever will take it and usually that's because they chose boring varieties or or they didn't realize that you could Harvest this plant at multiple stages that plant is Summer squash AKA zucchini so let me show you three varieties and some tips on how to harvest and how to plant the three varieties I'm choosing for you guys today is Emerald Delight a compact hybrid produces a ton of squash absolutely delicious very easy to see in Harvest then we got a classic Romanesco style that's an heirloom very nutty delicious flavor more complex than a standard zucchini and the last one is Maxx's gold which is a yellow summer squash they tend to have a more interesting texture than a standard zucchini and this is a new one to me that I'm very excited to try now when you are planting them you have a couple different options the first one that I like to do is make a little mound of compost squash absolutely loves compost it loves organic matter and you could plant directly in your compost pile just like this with a mound like this you could either go in with two or three seeds and once they germinate you want to select one cuz remember squash plants will get very bushy and large and you don't want to Crow it too much if you don't have time yet you can of course transplant them just start them in a bigger container like a forel like this once you're squash starts producing here are some things to keep in mind for Harvest time you could pick them as little baby squashes and pick them more regularly you'll never get overwhelmed they're really delicious when they're cooked whole let them get to 6 8 in use it as a standard squash as you normally would or grow that foot long monster that you forgot in the back of your garden cut it in half bacon in the oven stuffed with something but the really cool thing is you could also eat the flowers they could be stuffed with cheese put on a pizza in a quesadilla and it's delicious in every single way you eat it so this Garden behind me doesn't look like much now but come summer it will be full of beautiful color I plant mostly annuals in this Garden these days and one of those annuals that I put in there last year and I'm going to repeat because I loved it was Cosmos now Cosmos is a great plant to grow in the garden or for cutting I grow them as garden plants and then I just have enough of them that I cut when I want to cut and there are so many amazing varieties out there my advice with Cosmos would be to make sure you pay attention to the height on them because some of these uh Garden type of Cosmos can be very tall like 5T tall now Cosmos are one of those seeds that you can definitely start outside by direct sewing and they grow really well that way you do want to wait until your soil is at least 60° before you do that one of the reasons I like to start them ahead of time inside is because my garden is pretty full and since I'm planting these amongst other garden plants it can be hard for seedlings to get enough light to really get a good start these really couldn't be easier to sew you just need to lightly cover them so I sew about two seeds per cell that I'll eventually thin down to one cover it lightly with a little bit more seed starting mix a thin layer of vermiculite and just lightly kind of press everything in to make sure there's good soil contact and then I just give it a good Mist on top to make sure that top layer is moist once these germinate they will go under grow lights and we'll keep them there I will pot these up probably into like a 2in pot at some point and they should be good in that size pot until I get them outside I will also pinch out the center leader of these um at when they're probably let's say 3 in tall or so 4 in tall and that way we will get a bushier plant with more flowers on it this next crop you either love it or you hate it I'm from the south so I love it and I think the people that hate it just haven't had it the best way yet which is obviously fried and if you haven't guessed already I'm talking about okra the thing that can I some people about okra is it's texture when it's cooked it can become prettyy slimy but personally I love a good and slimy okra stew or gumbo but it's so versatile and there's so many other ways you can prepare it that can get rid of that sliminess like you can bake it you can fry it you can pickle it you can throw it in soups and stews you can do anything with okra okra is from West Africa and it's actually in habiscus family so it thrives in warmer climates and it needs to be planted in full sun and here in North Carolina I like to just direct sew it into the garden we have a really long growing season so we can get away with that but if you live in a cooler climate with a shorter growing season you might want to go ahead and start them indoors before your last frost just to get a head start you'll notice when you plant it out in Spring that it'll start off very slowly but once those temperatures get up to a good you know consistent 60 or above degrees it just starts taking off and if you ever grown okra before you know that sometimes it can grow so fast that it's hard to keep up with and it takes about 60-ish days from seed to harvest and although okra has a pretty sturdy thick stem and it can hold itself upright really well it's a good idea to just steak it with a wooden steak especially if you live somewhere where storms often pass through my favorite variety to grow and really the only variety I can grow is the Clemson spineless so okra has these little hairs all over it called spines and they can be very irritating to your skin especially if you're somebody that has sensitive skin like me I discovered the hard way my first year of growing okra I didn't grow a spineless variety um I got a pretty gnarly allergic reaction all over my hands from it so if you are the same way if you have sensitive skin I suggest going with the spineless variety there are very few plants that you could set in the ground forget it and then Harvest a massive yield at the end of the season and you could also eat the entire plant that plant of course is the sweet potato it loves long hot season I'm going to show you how to produce infant sweet potato slips at home with nothing but a simple container and one potato unlike growing normal potatoes when it comes to growing a sweet potato you're actually transplanting a sweet potato slip that is a growth that comes out of the sweet potato that you then take off and put that in your garden you're not actually planting an entire sweet potato so how do you actually produce these slips in the first place the traditional method is to take your sweet potato put it in a cup of water and wait for those slips to emerge then you have to break them off put them in a new cup of water reroot those that whole process can take a very long time time and in my opinion it isn't very convenient so what I've done instead is I've created a system you take your sweet potato put it in a shallow container with some soil in this case it's an old milk car I'll show you exactly how to set it up right now just to show you guys how flexible the system is you can literally just use a cardboard box cuz it's a temporary place for your sweet potato put a little bit of soil in take your sweet potato bury it in that and then cover that back up again until you're just seeing a little bit of that sweet potato once you have your sweet potato in the container water it in place it on a heat mat that heat mat is going to encourage slip production very quickly in as little as a week you'll actually start getting a little sweet potato slip emerge and the beauty of the system is that it's already covered in soil so it's going to produce Roots when you break it off you can put that right in your garden without having to do any intermediate steps so up here in South Eastern Wisconsin zone 5B 6A spring tends to come in fits and starts and today is not a very springy day at all which makes doing some of these seed starting tours not just one more thing on the list to do but an exercise in hope now right now when Gardens up here are just starting to Spring to life it's great to think about what the summer garden could look like and for me that always involves annual Vines so one that I start here in April is Cypress Vine which is worth growing I think not just for the pretty little star-shaped flowers on it but also for its amazing foliage in fact this is what sets this Vine apart from a lot of other annual Vines these Vines are not going to start performing well until it gets really hot so whatever we can give them for a head start is a really good thing which is why I start these inside on heat mats and under lights because they will get enough heat to get growing I'm growing both white and pink Cypress Vines there's also a red color this is a seed with a really hard seed coat so it can benefit from either nicking or soaking I actually have filled these deep cells up halfway with regular potting mix and then the rest of the way with seed starting mix so that means that they get that really fine tilth of the seed starting mix but then once they're starting to really put on some root growth they actually get down to the potty mix which has just a little bit more nutrition and they want to be planted about a/4 inch deep and I just use a little bit more of my seed mix to just fill in that little hole on top so I will keep these in a tray on a heat mat with a humidity Dome as soon as they germinate I'll take that humidity Dome off and these really want to grow on at about 70° so that's the temperature I'm going to aim to keep them at as they're doing their growing this crop is new to me this year and I'm super stoked to be growing it it's in the same Botanical family as okra it pretty much can be grown the exact same way as okra but it's used very differently it's called Roselle and Roselle is grown for its calluses or calluses I'm actually not sure how to pronounce the plural form of the word callx but a cix is the outermost part of a flower that kind of protects the innermost part of a flower and Roselle's flowers are the same as okra and hibiscus they're just so stunning and the callix is usually harvested 7 to 10 days after it's done flowering when the calex is really red and tender Rosel is used all around the world and in the Caribbean Central America and Africa they make this drink with Roselle that is so so good so it's the dried cuses uh Ginger cinnamon and cloves and I tried this for the first time last year and I was immediately like okay this is amazing how do I grow it it can also be used to make jams jellies syrups sauces and it has like a Tangy type of flavor almost cranberry is is the best way I can describe it and it is packed full of vitamin C antioxidants all that good stuff stuff a lot of people just drink it as like a healthy tea just like with okra if you have a longer growing season you can just direct sew it into the garden if you're in a colder climate start it indoors um and it can get pretty large like 6 to 10 feet tall and it can Bush out quite a bit so just keep that in mind as well I'm going to be growing it in a 20-gallon grow bag because this is what I like to do when I'm trialing a new plant that I've never grown before I like to just separate it grow it in a grow bag I want to see how it grows uh its growth habit and everything and then that way the next year I can try to integrate it into my garden better and I'll know what it grows like out of all the plants I've grown in my garden this pick probably is the most satisfying one I have ever grown for the flavor for the delicious flavor the juice running down your chin that would be the watermelon you need a big amount of space ideally you need a ton because it wants to sprawl it's actually very similar to pumpkins in that you plant it in a mount two to three seeds and then you just let it ride but if you are in a smaller space I might recommend sugar baby it is just a smaller watermelon in general you can actually fit it in your fridge so you can store it without having to break it down but if you want to get absolutely wild I might say Charleston gray this one is a tank and then if you want to go with a different color Mountain sweet yellow would probably be my pick I haven't had as much success personally with the yellows as I have with more of the classic red red watermelons but the thing that has helped me the most with watermelon is planting it on a mound that I've amended with a good amount of compost and I actually will create sort of like a volcano structure where I'll create the mound like this and then I'll div it in a little bit at the top that helps capture water early on in its life because if you're going to run into an issue with watermelon because it's growing through the heat of the summer it has very large leaves a ton of vines and it's in the name you need to make sure that the soil is adequately moist at all times and you need to make sure that especially early on in its life it gets a lot of nutrition and fertility that's why I like to throw that composted mound on I might even throw a little nitrogen heavy fertilizer into that mix but man when you can Harvest a watermelon and we have a whole guide on growing I I'll show you exactly when to harvest them but when you harvest it pop it off of the stem cut that thing in half and just scoop straight out when it's field War it is one of the most satisfying things you will ever have happen to you so I hope the growing tips helped you get fired up to plant this April check out our watermelon guide right here and thanks again to Shopify for sponsoring the video we couldn't build epic gardening without them good luck in the garden and keep on growing