My potatoes didn't do much this year, and I canned all of my roma tomatoes to make sauce. I really should get some knee pads or a large pad. My knees were killing me when I was planting garlic the other day. I'm busy at work today. I have 306 pounds of fudge to make in the next week for an order. These vidoes really help to pass the time and it's great information for my new gardening addiction. I wish I could grow a banana tree but the cold and frozen north isn't the place for it.

I vote for the softer kneeling pad. I have one from the tool section of Home Depot and love it for the size as well as the soft but sturdyness of it.

Don't forget you can eat the sweet potato greens! The young leaves are great in salads and you can stir fry or fry up the others with some butter and garlic, lemon, or just a little red wine vinegar. If I threw my vines into the compost I'd have them growing out of the pile in no time if its outside one of those high heat container composters! Last year in florida my sweet potatoes pretty much all died due to the insane amount of rain from Ian, and this year I barely have any. Its rough as finding purples and whites are super hard! I really hope to recover as it only takes a couple to make tons of slips and they LOVE florida summer I used to get 200lbs of them sometimes! I've found the best way to grow them is in ground as they produce a lot more larger tubers. The biggest pain is making sure they cure correctly as they need that perfect temperature and humidity range otherwise they don't taste very sweet. AS for those pests I usually get whiteflies and some sort of beetle that love to attack mine. That looks like the same sort of beetle damage I get! They also like to attack the tubers if left too long! The vines don't seem to care about the whiteflies at least, but those suckers sure love to spread to my peppers and the peppers die pretty fast so I gotta keep blasting the vines to keep them away.

Maybe you need to add a night shift to your natural pest control system (i.e., in addition to the chickens and fish). Have you considered adding a bat house or bat box to the homestead? Not only do bats eat up a whole lot of nighttime pests (such as mosquitos) they also help pollinate peaches and ... wait for it ... bananas.

The reason they usually give you only 4 or 5 fish is because they multiply quickly like crazy. But, the koi should balance that out. 😊

The Epic Pond is looking great! Hopefully your minnows do the trick but I still recommend getting some native salamanders in there. Their larva will devour the mosquito lava and the adults will move into the garden and eat other pests. Plus they're hella cute!

Definitely the softer one! I would want the waterproof coating to go all the way around and not just the top and bottom. We get a lot of rain, sprinklers, dew, etc.

I really swear by mosquito dunks. The thing is, for the Egyptian mosquitos that we have here in San Diego, you can't just put a couple of dunks in standing water/gutters/etc and call it good, because Egyptian mosquitos have evolved to need FAR less water that other mosquitos to complete their life cycle. So what I do is, I put a dunk in all the usual places, AND also I crumble them up and put them in my watering can, then water my entire garden (raised beds, pots, in-ground, everything!) at least once a month with the dunk-water to get the mosquito-predating bacteria into the soil itself. This has a very very noticeable effect at reducing the mosquitos! (NOTE: it doesn't hurt any other species except fungus gnats.) Mosquitos do sometimes drift in from the neighbors' yard or the canyon behind my house, but Egyptian mosquitos are weak fliers so their numbers are greatly reduced just from keeping my own yard inhospitable to them. I hope in the future I can also add a permanent pond to encourage dragonflies!

I'd love to see a keyhole design bed in the garden for next season!

Hey man! Thank you for bringing up the sweet potato vine “devastation” that you have never seen before. Us too this year. I’m south of you guys - Baja California Sur - and I never had issues with sweet pot leaves before… but this year was weird wild stuff. I’ll be watching the comments on this video to learn more 🌵Thanks for all the videos and your website as it hits well with this new climate I’m living / gardening in

Here are my personal observations when it comes to kneeling pads; I have chronic back pain so I tend to kneel a lot in lieu of bending over. I also have a history of knee injuries from sports. I have just about every durometer of kneeing pad in my garden tools bin. If I'm going to be doing a lot of "up and down" tasks in the garden I'll strap on my hard-shell knee pads. The softer pads perform better on more solid surfaces. When I use the softer pads on loose or uneven ground, my knees tend to roll and cause fatigue in other areas. Especially when reaching or pivoting on a knee. I've found that the firmer durometer foams offer more stability on loose or uneven ground but still offer enough cushion for when I have to shift my weight on my knees. Hope this is helpful.

I'd love to see you do some complex interplanting of many different crops. Kinda like the three sisters but with other plants that play well together.

I love that you didn't kill the spider! 🤗 Kudos to you!☺️

The grasshoppers in Arizona LOVE sweet potato leaves! Mine look like swiss cheese. Looks like grasshopper damage to me. Not sure why they start in the middle of the leaves. Cute tiny little green babies that grow up to be three to four inch long brown monsters that fly up and whack you in the face. So fun! Love your Channel by the way!

The kneeler I use (when I use one. Kneeling too long can cause my blood pressure to tank) is about halfway between yours in firmness. The tendon that attaches my knee to my femur is calcified at my femur, so I have protruding boney points there. If a kneeler is too soft, they don't cushion those enough. If it is too firm, same. Kinda a goldolocks thing, but you gotta do what you gotta do!

the potato you pulled out at 2:31 looks like the WHAT ARE THEY SELLING old lady from spongebob 💀

Strawberries can be an option in your whiskey barrel. It helps contain the runners.

LOL the way I knew this was sweet potatoes from the thumbnail alone. I changed the composition of my sweet potato bed soil (and depth, frankly) so I hope they'll come out well. But even the crazy twisted ones still taste good. And the greens are good on salads!

We harvested a 12lb sweet potato this year! We had an absolutely massive harvest! 👏 🙏 All glory to God!

I think the softer material would be better for the kneeling pad so there's some "give" when you set your weight down. It would also contour better to the ground and any hilly areas

I would always vote for the softer pad, great design! Love the new products coming out! Please come out with a waist apron type product with a pocket for harvesting tomatoes or strawberries or peas or anything little :)

FYI, "floating" fish does not mean simply tossing a plastic bag into the water. That is done to acclimate the fish to the water temp only. What actually is meant by 'floating' is to slowly exchange the water in the bag with the water in the pond or tank. Add about a half cup of pond water to the bag, wait 30 minutes and repeat for a couple hours, approximately. By that time the fish will have been able to adapt to the new water and they won't be shocked when introduced to full pond water. This method saves many lives and ensures success when introducing fish to their new environment 🥰.

That spider is an orb weaver I believe. Extremely freaky looking but quite harmless if I remember correctly. Anyway, Here in Alaska our mosquito season ended several months ago. It was nice for about a month but now it's snowing , windy and dark which will be the main climate until maybe March or April of 2024. 😩😖

I'm in San Diego as well and the amount of mosquitos this year was bonkers.

This also does remind me that last year a farmer, well more so a farming business devoted a patch of his land to grow sweet potatoes over here in zone 7b. It must have been a success since this year an entire acre of theirs was filled with sweet potatoes. Makes me consider growing a few too, even though i am not a massive fan of it, using the tubers in stews is honestly always welcome to me!

Lemongrass oil and water in a spray bottle has helped me keep no-see-ums from biting every part of my body. They get into my bedroom through the window screens - all summer long. (Escondido). I also get mosquitos so it helps with that, too. Pure neem oil, mixed with a carrier oil (I used MCT) and some water sprayed and then rubbed on a bite gives great relief. That also is a bit of a deterrent.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the fish manage your mosquito control. Here in Florida the pressure is always heavy with them but using mosquito dunks and loose granules of BT on the ground and in pots of plants does help as well as getting rid of standing water. In areas where you like to sit down having fans to blow them away is preferable since they can’t fly well in breezy conditions. I recently saw a video where a guy hooked up a giant fan in his garage with a screen in the front and when the mosquitoes got sucked in through the air intake in the back he sprayed them with rubbing alcohol. He was throwing away tons of dead mosquitoes.

A flower garden at the back wall would be cool, especially if you plant the seeds you got from the gigantic sunflower. It would provide shade and pollination to the peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.

We're definitely in Fall up here in the Inland Empire, been hovering in the 70's mostly, with overnight lows mostly in the 50's but We're starting to get some in the 40's now.

I know I'm kind of late to this video, but if you want some serious insect and mosquito control on both land and water - see if you can get some tiger salamander larvae. They are often sold as bait, but the sallywogs eat a MASSIVE amount of mosquitos, and the adults eat a MASSIVE amount of insects. They are native to your region I think (unless you are further inland than I think) and generally could use some help conservation-wise. Tiger sallies even get large enough not to be eaten by your chickens, and can keep mice populations down as well.

Do a video about planting guilds. Fruit trees, fruit bushes, edible herbs and ground cover. Maybe plant them all in a small bed or large planter. A team from tree to cover.

Loads of fun! 😊 The cabbages look amazing as do your artichoke and orchard, beside the peach tree (😂), so sad.

Mosquito are horrible this past two years I’m in socal as-well. I made a container pond for mosquito fish but it’s still bad. I found that rubbing fresh lemon thyme and or fresh lemon balm helps me while working around the yard.

Ya need Mexican sun flowers in ya garden! For bees/ humming birds! More flowers please!

I'm thinking use that space to grow an aesthetically pleasing urban jungle, with multiple layers of plants of various heights, taller ones around the perimeter of the space, with lower-growing perrenial shrubs and taller flowers like snapdragons, transitioning to a lower cover annual bunch grasses and wildflowers in the center sort of forming a little mini meadow surrounded by layers of vegetation and flowers, with maybe some new banana trees at a corner or two, or a gazebo/intimate seating area for 2 in another corner. Something like a gazebo that you could use to add some vertical interest, maybe even go back to your Epic roots and grow some container plants in hanging baskets, with something pretty vining up the structure. The idea being to create a sort of walled-in with vegetation, secluded hangout area where you could tuck back into there and not really see the rest of the yard. An outdoor garden break room. You know, a quaint, lovely English garden escape area where the idea is to grow yourself a beautiful chill out spot where you and your girlfriend can hang out with a bottle of wine and watch the butterflies and enjoy the layers and pops of color instead of only growing edible veggies in there.

You should look into the Korean “hip attached work stools”. They are literally stools belted to your hip so every time you squat you get a seat!

We live here on the Coastal side of Georgia in Savannah. I usually buy two mosquito plants every year and do not have any problems with mosquitoes! This year I am trying to propagate the mosquito plant (citronella plant). I tried to do it last year, but we had that very big freeze and well they died. Lol.

On your smaller banana plant be sure and remove the dead foliage on the trunk so more chlorophyl is produced. Just gave my chickens the melons too, I do the same to give treats to both groups of the chickens. I definitely prefer the softer mat, I have both.

I give thanks ooh great mentor for the many teachings you've given us🙌

I vote for the firm kneeler. My ground is very rocky. All that uneven sharpness is what's hard on my knees.

Gambusia (mosquito fish) are THE BEST!! I used to gather up mosquito larvae from other ponds and watch them chow down.

I love your pond it's so pretty! Always been my dream to have one even just a small pond

I just about fell on the floor when you pulled out the sweet potatoes 😂😂😂

Hello. Can you please do an overhead shot with your drone in the even at 5pm and in the morning at 8am . I can come up with some different ideas for your garden. Have a great day, Kristen

Finally! I’ve been waiting for an update on this

We use very effective mosquito traps.....four buckets placed at each corner of the property filled with water (dirty water is even better) and a few tubs of mosquito bits...or crumbled mosquito dunks. It works SUPER well...every couple weeks check to see if there is at least half a bucket of water and add 2 more tbs of the bits. It is non toxic to fish, birds, cats, dogs, etc. We NEVER EVER have mosquitos anymore and live in a very mosquito-y area.

With your back yard & climate, I'd be putting in a tall-ish tree of some kind in the middle(or maybe more than one). 'Full sun' is only 8 hours a day and in LA I'd think you have more of a problem with too much sun rather than not enough - for plants & people alike. So I'd be adding some shade that would mitigate the worst of the heat. With a single tree (or trees spaced far enough apart), all the plants would still get plenty of sun, but maybe not bake quite so much. I'd suggest a pink peppercorn tree for food & shade, but apparently they can be toxic to poultry. So maybe a moringa or a stone pine (for pine nuts).

The sweet potatoes leaves are delicious sautéed with garlic, salt and drizzle of coconut oil. 😋

lol, I’m up in the SF Bay Area… this is the only growing season where I have had broccoli, kohlrabi and cabbage growing along with the zucchini and tomatoes! and yes, the Brassicas were planted in early spring and they have continued growing all season long!

Mine were the same, it was so weird! I’ve grown good ones before (Nova Scotia, Canada) but never have they been SO skinny but also SO LONG at the same time. Best guess: I didn’t feed them enough and they grew extra long searching for nutrition.

Kevin, On the kneelers, I'm an elderly, disabled woman. Softer kneelers are easier on the knees. Also, it's very difficult to find larger-sized kneelers, so if ya'all could offer one w/ a larger footprint, that would be wonderful. Thank you. 😊

Kevin, you had me laughing at “feminine care” for taking care of feet! Men have feet too. Manicures and pedicures (mani/pedi) are usually performed at nail salons or spas…And any person with feet can get a pedicure, and any person with hands can get a manicure. The hand and foot care does not have to include nail polish or fake nails. Also, I’m acknowledging that you are working hard towards your weight loss goal as you’ve mentioned in a previous video. Kudos for staying the course.

Mosquito's have been horrendous all over california this year. We're up in the central valley and it's been BAD! Hopefully next year is better.

I planted a California native black sage plant and it is one of the few plants that you can have that will decrease mosquito population because of the strong smell of the leaves. I think it smells gorgeous! And I have virtually no mosquitoes compared to my neighbors.

The softer one seems nice. Maybe add a small hang and pick up. Also would be amazing if the entire thing was coated and didn’t have the rough sides. Thanks for your videos!!!

I like the thicker kind, but i live in an area with VERY rocky soil, and the thinner ones tend to not block the sharp edges of the rocks as well.

Can't wait to see the banana plants really take off! Question though... What are the banana looking plants in your neighbors yard right behind your bananas? They always catch my eye and look so tropical! right at 6:15 above the chicken mural.

Fantastic video and yes you should start adding the kneeler to your store🌳🌱😯

I vote for the more flexible one! Can’t wait to get one when they come out 😍

It would be cool if you guys had a hugelkultur bed in the backyard!

I would love to see the EPIC raised bed garden. If you can fit 50 raised beds, I think the space would have such a modern architectural appeal, especially with the painted back drop. Progressing from short to tall crops would give such a cool visual.

for a good outdoor kneeler you should do both foams in layers

Hey Kev for your pepper expansion next year try Diavolicchio Diamante Calabrian Chili Pepper - it's from Calabria, Italy and so good and flavorful w just the right amount of spice. Also great for drying/hanging and in many recipes. Salute! ~Amy in SD

Lol, I should have watched this video first before I watched Jacques' garlic vid, because I had a basil question. I left the question for him in those comments. Maybe you could look at that question? I'd love any feedback about growing basil you can offer. Thanks!

Maybe design an small area with market garden beds and use that to contribute to a local food bank

Gf!? That's the best joke all year. All jokes love u and always get a thumbs up from me

I'd love to see you do a chaos bed next year!

I tend to prefer soft and flexible since my yard has some weird grading and divots we need to correct.

You should go with prop long farm style rows. You have the space after all.

I like kneelers too, I prefer the softer ones personally.

Oh yeah i tend to have that with parsnips. Idk why but half of them look good, with about a third of them being humongous. And then the other half have shapes all over the place 😂 It makes me wonder, what does affect the formation of root crops in such a way that they grow in shape x or y or z.

10:52 so cute!! 🐔😻

Are the mosquito fish called Pygmy Perch? I added some to my pond recently, mine are native to Western Australia. They eat mosquito larvae but not frog eggs which is awesome! I like the kneelers too but I use one that is a seat one way and kneeler the other way.

I laughed about the tiny fish as I thought the koi would eat them 😅. You can see if there are larva in the water. The fish you have should be taking care of them. It the whole area you are in that needs to be scanned for sitting water and don’t forget to check rain gutters. Old tires, plastic containers, pails-it only takes a tablespoon of water for the mosquitoes to lay eggs. Not sure if the Mosquito Bits or donuts work as they didn’t phase fungus gnats on seedlings. We rarely have mosquitoes, but a few years ago we were crazy inundated with them so much they were bouncing off the car and house windows. I said, Something has Changed! We went for a walk behind our property and found the problem!! A garage business in the country had stock piled HUGE MOUNTAINS of TIRES!! UGH!! He removed them and the mosquitoes went with them. Solved!! I grew up near wetlands and it Was Terrible with mosquitoes. A pond the farmer created that drained to a brook that drained to the creek. Later I got my folks a mosquito zapper with lure and it was covered in a blanket of mosquitoes Everyday and had to take a leaf blower to it. So many mosquitoes 🙄😵‍💫 So check around your neighborhood as I think you will find the problem unless your near wetland, then that’s a bigger problem that calls for zappers.

Soft flexible kneeling pad.. Lettering in a more vibrant color with a hole to carry or hang🤔 Easier to locate when you leave things out or have bad eyesight.

Be warned with sweet potatoes; wherever they take root, they will come back year after year and will be very invasive.. but the volunteers you get can be nice as long as you have the space for them..

For what it’s worth, I have had great success using guppies for mosquito control. I can start with one or two pregnant females and their offspring will propagate until they are killed by cold (I used them in zone 4). My experience is that they breed fast enough, and hide well enough, to stay ahead of their predators.

Always love your channel,👍🙏❤️

We get so many different shapes of sweet potatoes. The ones that look like a small intestine, we cook and feed to our dog. We got some crazy big sweet potatoes (2 1/2 pound one).

You should try doing some interestingly shaped beds like hexagons or something.

That spider was like, WHAT THE HEEEELL! 3:07

What if you used a series of raised beds at different height levels to maximize the sunlight, so nothing gets shaded out. You could even do beds on the ground for the low lying veggies you grow.

I agree that the weather has been really weird this year, and that seems to be the consensus no matter where in the world you were growing, which is even weirder if you ask me. Hopefully it was a fluke and not the beginning of a pattern because I am personally not a fan, lol. I also was feeling like fall was never coming. I'm in Eastern Mass and it was seventy something degrees here last week, in November! But now all of a sudden it's going to be 40's all week and it's like BAM, WINTER'S HERE! So you know, it's coming! 😂

I have grown some pretty crazy sweet potatoes myself you never know what your going to get when you grow sweet potatoes

You should eat the sweet potato greens! They are delicious!! Saute them like any other green.

Create a crazy labyrinth. It will also provide the chickens more places to hide when they're out partying in the yard.

I'm going to be building some walkthrough gourd trellises/arborways this year, maybe try some of that? I'm hoping there might be a submit your garden photos so that I can give people some ideas next year! I always want to add onto and refine my permaculture gardens. I might have to try some of those mosquito fish in my retention pond next year!

We're way over in Indiana and the mosquito population was off the charts this past season.

Me laughing in Australian 😂 we have sooooo many mosquito fish here. They were introduced and have done very well.

While I love the idea of the mosquito fish, I feel like you just bought your koi some nice fish food. Hopefully they breed quick enough to keep some sort of population before they all get eaten 🤣😭😬

Kevin, planting basil in fall? I thought basil was a warm weather crop. I'm in the san berdoo/riverside area north of you and my basil never does good in the colder months of Dec/Jan/Feb. I do have a Genovese and a Thai basil that I've overwintered now for three years. All my other basil plants I just go ahead and let them die and replant new seeds in the spring . Im definitely interested in knowing if you plant basil in the fall and your results.

Try sweet potato in one of the raised garden beds and in alot of rich compost.

Not sure if you've done this before, but it would be way cool if you had flowers planted in a wagon wheel shape... zinnias, sunflowers, straw flowers, and whatever else grows well in your climate. Maybe other unique shapes as well (donut, star, happy face), sky's the limit 😁

Do you get bats over there? You could install a bat house to encourage some to move in and eat those 'skeeters!

You really don't need that many mosquito fish to start with. They reproduce quickly. If you are in a cold climate, bring them inside when it gets cool in Fall, for the winter. They are tropical fish. I grew up in Florida and we would get wild ones from Everglades. Mine spend winter in a kiddy pool in the basement, along with the waterlily. Outdoor pond is too shallow for that to survive. The cattails are fine outside. In Ohio

Hey Kevin, what's the benefit to thinning leaves on bananas? I'm pretty new to growing them, I've just been cutting them off when they brown. Thanks!

The pond does look really good!

Have you thought about a garden maze or wheel? Put your beds in a design

Eric, Do you ever saute the sweet potato leaves or use them in a salad to eat? They are delicious!

‘Nice lookin lope though’ hehehe 😂