60 Garden Vocabulary Words Advanced English lesson
Vanessa:
Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Are you ready to talk about the garden?
Let’s do it.
To be a fluent, confident English speaker,
you need to be able to have the words to talk
about everyday life.
We’ve already talked about some kitchen vocabulary,
household vocabulary, bathroom vocabulary,
but let’s go outside today.
Today, I’d like to take you on a little tour
of my vegetable garden, there’s also a couple
of flowers, and help you to enrich your vocabulary
to talk about nature, the outdoors, and especially
the garden.
Are you ready?
Well, let me get my hat on.
Let’s get started.
I used to think that I didn’t have a green
thumb.
This means that you’re good at growing plants.
Because all of my house plants were so sad
and died.
But when I moved here and I started planting
things outside, I realized, surprise, plants
like sun, fresh air, and rain.
Who would have guessed?
Let’s start by talking about a couple different
types of gardens.
The first word that you might hear related
to types of gardens is landscape.
Now we often use this word when we’re talking
about changing the land in some way.
That could be adding a garden.
That might be adding a rock wall, maybe adding
some drainage.
Oftentimes, a person who has this as their
professional job, who helps you to shape the
land in some way, they’re called a landscaper,
a landscaper.
They might help you to know where you should
plant trees or how you can shape the land
so that there isn’t flooding, these types
of things.
Very useful job.
The next type of garden is a common one, a
flower garden.
So if someone asks you, “Oh, do you like gardening?”
and you say, “Yeah,” they might ask you, “What
type of garden do you have?”
And you could say, “Well, I’ve got a flower
garden.”
It’s great for attracting pollinators.
These are like bees and other types of insects
that help to spread pollen to different flowers
and help them to grow, help our world to become
a wonderful place.
Flower gardens are great.
Add some color to your life.
Another type of garden is a vegetable garden
or an herb garden.
Now notice that in American English, we don’t
say herb, the H. In American English, this
H is completely silent.
It’s just gone.
It’s on vacation somewhere.
Maybe it’s hanging out in the garden.
And we can say herb.
Herb.
So here behind me, this is my vegetable garden.
If you’re only growing herbs, this could be
basil, cilantro, parsley, these types of things
that you use to garnish your food, that would
be an herb garden.
It’s a great way to get started because we
use herbs all the time and they don’t take
much space, much investment.
So you can easily grow an herb garden maybe
on a balcony or something like that.
If you live somewhere extremely dry, you might
have a rock garden.
One of my neighbors has this.
I live somewhere pretty wet, actually.
It rains a lot here.
But one of my neighbors has a rock garden.
And I imagine it’s because this is low maintenance.
It’s just a cool way of landscaping.
And you don’t really have to take care of
it much.
You just put some rocks down, make some cool
designs, and voilà, you have a rock garden.
Another type of garden, and this could apply
to pretty much any of these that I’ve just
talked about, is organic.
I have an organic garden, or I like to grow
organically.
Now, recently in more modern times, this term
has come to mean that you don’t use any pesticides.
There might be some organic pesticides.
There might be a kind of gray area here.
But in general, you try to avoid pesticides
and grow organically.
That’s what I’m trying to do here.
There are some pros and cons to that, which
we’ll talk about in a minute, with some pests.
But there is a great way to be able to help
nature around you, help the bugs, help the
flora and fauna is by having an organic garden.
Let’s talk about some things you might wear
in the garden.
The first is a sun hat.
I have several different sun hats because
I’m always trying to protect my face or shade
my eyes from the sun.
It’s early morning right now, but this area
can get extremely sunny.
So a sun hat is really helpful.
You might also wear a baseball cap.
Usually, sun hats are more for women and a
baseball cap is worn by either men or women.
So something to shade your eyes, protect your
face.
You might also wear some gloves.
I actually forgot to bring my gloves out right
now for this video.
So sorry.
You can imagine gardening gloves are useful.
I especially use these when I’m weeding.
So when I’m picking things that might have
thorns or that’s prickly, it’s really helpful
for protecting your hands.
And you can also wear boots.
In a moment, you’ll see those as we head into
the garden.
But you can wear some rain boots or gardening
boots if it’s muddy, or if you want to just
protect your feet a little bit more.
If you’re tramping around maybe in a difficult
area, you might want to wear some boots to
protect your feet.
But you know what?
Sometimes I just garden barefoot.
And that feels nice too.
Next, let’s talk about some ways that you
can bring water to your plants.
These are the tools that you need for gardening.
The first one is a hose, a hose.
This hose is great for reaching some faraway
places in my garden that I don’t really feel
like bringing my watering can to.
And this is a watering can.
You fill it with water and you water your
plants.
It’s very useful.
Next, we have a shovel.
Now, both of these are technically shovels.
This small one, we might call a spade or a
trowel.
I feel like trowel is more of a British English
term and spade or shovel is more likely to
be used in the U.S. for a small shovel.
But this is definitely a shovel.
I use this for digging big holes, for scooping
lots of things.
It’s hard work, but it’s a useful tool.
This is a hoe, and this is a rake.
A hoe is useful for slamming into the ground
and breaking up the soil.
There’s kind of been a more recent movement
called no-till gardening.
And this means you don’t break up the soil
with a hoe.
Sometimes I use this hoe for even other things.
Like if there’s a root in the way, I can break
the root with this hoe.
And the rake is useful for scraping away some
loose things on top of the soil or for moving
the soil around in an easier way than maybe
a shovel.
Some other items that you need in the garden
is some twine.
Twine is the term for string that you use
outside.
It’s pretty thick and weather-resistant.
You can tie up some plants with some twine.
Also, I almost always protect my skin with
sunscreen.
You can call this sunscreen or some people
call this suntan lotion.
It’s not for getting a tan.
This is for protecting your skin.
But you’ll hear some regional terms for this.
And I also sometimes wear bug spray.
This is especially for mosquitoes.
The mosquitoes can get pretty bad around here
because, like I said, we get a lot of rain.
So depending on the month, July, August, September,
mosquitoes are really bad and I hate to get
bit.
So I sometimes wear bug spray too.
And finally, I wanted to show you this.
So I mentioned my garden is organic, but I
do spray something on my vegetables when there
are pests.
So sometimes I use this oil.
This is in a different container.
It’s just some oil I added here.
It’s called neem oil.
And it’s kind of like an organic way to get
little tiny bugs to go away.
So that’s useful.
And I also have a basket for carrying all
the wonderful things that I’ve picked.
So I just picked some chard leaves.
These are huge, gigantic leaves.
They’re kind of bitter, pretty tasty, and
they’re colorful too.
So you need a basket for carrying your vegetables
or your flowers if you want to pick them.
All right, now that we have the right clothing
and the right tools, let’s take a look at
actually the plants.
How can you plant a plant?
Well, there’s two options.
You can use a packet of seeds, which I didn’t
bring out here with me.
I’m very unorganized for this video.
You can use a packet of seeds.
You can plant those seeds directly in the
ground.
Or you can use a start.
Now, this is not a verb.
This is a noun.
A start.
Sometimes we call this a plant start.
And this is where you’ve gone to the plant
nursery, a plant store, some kind of gardening
store, and you bought a little plant.
So for these peppers…
We have some peppers that are looking pretty
good.
Let’s take a look at this one.
For these peppers, I bought them as starts.
They were little plants that I bought from
the nursery, and this is kind of a fail-proof
way to have plants grow.
At first, I actually thought they weren’t
going to work.
And now it looks like they’re actually getting
some peppers.
Cool.
You never know what’s going to happen.
So I bought these as starts.
But for some other things, like these beans,
which I guess you can’t see here, but I’ll
show you in a moment, for these beans, I planted
them as a seed.
I just put the beans in the ground and they
came up.
Some of them worked.
Some of them didn’t.
I wasted some seeds, but that’s just how I
tried it.
There are two words that are commonly associated
with gathering vegetables from the garden,
and that is to pick a vegetable or to harvest
a vegetable.
And I want to quickly tell you the difference.
In a garden like this, this is just my backyard
garden, I would say I picked a pepper.
I picked some beans.
I wouldn’t really say I harvested a pepper,
I harvested beans, because we use that word
harvest for farms, for big-scale gardens,
something that’s maybe more agricultural or
industrial.
There’s a big crop.
And in my garden, it’s just one pepper here,
a couple of beans there.
We’re not gathering huge amounts of vegetables.
So I would say I’m going to go to the garden
to pick some vegetables.
I’m going to go to the garden to pick some
tomatoes.
These guys are not ripe yet, but we could
use pick for the garden and harvest for more
big-scale projects.
There are a couple of structures that are
common in gardens, especially vegetable gardens.
You will see a trellis.
This is a trellis.
It’s actually a trellis that I made with just
some wire and some wood.
But plants like to grow up the trellis, especially
plants that are vines.
Vining plants like to grow up a trellis.
This is a cool kind of spinach.
Usually, spinach is not a vine, but this is
called Malabar spinach.
I think it’s so cool.
It’s got like a purple stem.
And it grows up a trellis.
It’s pretty tasty.
Tastes like spinach.
But it’s a fun plant to grow up a trellis.
I also have some raised beds.
That is like a wooden box.
And it’s helpful for containing the soil that
I want to keep in there and keeping out the
weeds.
So raised beds take a little bit of effort.
You got to fill them with soil.
You got to build them.
Maybe you got to buy the wood.
But I have a couple raised beds in my garden
and those are super helpful.
You can also see kind of in the distance back
here, I have a hoop house.
This hoop house I’ve kind of opened up a little
bit to get some more fresh air.
But when it’s cold outside, maybe at the end
of the season in the fall, you might want
to create a hoop house over your garden so
that the plants don’t get too cold.
You can continue to grow a little bit into
the winter.
That’s what I did with cabbage and some leeks
and some onions, I think, too.
But in the end, bugs still got inside and
still ate it.
But some of my cabbages grew.
So I guess there was a little success.
It’s all trial and error.
If you can see inside this crazy tomato plant,
there is a tomato cage.
This is usually what we call the structure
that holds up tomatoes because tomatoes grow
on vines.
But if you don’t have a tomato cage, they’ll
just fall over and get all over the ground
and they might rot more easily.
So I have a tomato cage and it’s working pretty
well.
My tomatoes are doing well.
Usually, my son picks them before they’re
pretty ripe.
But you know what?
Gardening with kids, there is a lot of give
and take.
This is the most insane tomato plant I’ve
ever seen.
It’s huge.
It’s way taller than me.
And it’s sprawling everywhere.
It exploded out of the cage.
And yet we don’t have a single ripe tomato
yet.
It’s got these cool little, see if I can show
you, these cool pear-shaped yellow tomatoes.
So they’re going to be like small pear-shaped
tomatoes.
And there’s kind of a lot of them on this
plant so far.
I hope so, because it’s gigantic.
But nothing’s ripe yet.
Kind of weird.
But hopefully, it’ll happen.
Now, not everything in my garden is doing
great.
I showed you some cool-looking plants that
are thriving, but not everything does awesome.
Let’s talk about some of the problems that
can happen in a garden.
Not just a vegetable garden, but a flower
garden too.
Well, one of the most common problems is pests.
Pests.
As you can see, this brussel sprout plant,
it’s been in the garden since like March,
I think.
And it is completely destroyed by pests.
Because I have an organic garden, there’s
not an awful lot I can do.
I covered it with a hoop house to keep butterflies
out.
I covered it with netting to help little slugs
and caterpillars and everything not get in
there.
But you know what?
Sometimes there’s nothing you can do and you
just lose some.
We say you win some, you lose some.
So we might say that this brussel sprout is
not doing well.
I’ll probably end up just pulling it up and
giving it to our chickens because it’s not
producing any brussel sprouts.
There’s nothing I can do with it.
So it either goes to the chickens or it goes
to the compost pile.
Talking about compost, there are a couple
of different words that we can use to talk
about what’s underneath me right now.
This.
Nice dark soil.
When we talk about what’s on the ground, we
say dirt.
It’s just dirt.
But in the garden, we use the word soil to
talk about this dark rich stuff, is called
soil.
And usually, that means that it has a richer
composition.
It’s got some minerals.
It’s got some good stuff for the plants.
That doesn’t mean that it has fertilizer.
It just means that it is better for the plants.
If you just plant your tomatoes in dirt, they
might not grow.
But if you plant them in some nice rich soil,
you have a better chance of them becoming
a beautiful tomato plants, or chard, or kale,
or cabbage, or whatever you want to grow.
If you don’t have very rich soil, then you
can add some amendments to the soil.
And that’s what I usually do at the end of
each season, or the beginning of each growing
season, is add some amendments.
That’s usually minerals or some organic compounds
to the soil to make it richer and healthier
so that your plants can easily grow.
Like I said, if you just throw a tomato in
the ground in the natural native soil where
you live, it probably won’t do too well.
So adding some amendments to the soil is really
helpful.
What are these green tomatoes?
Can I eat them?
Well, you could try.
In fact, there’s a dish in the south of the
U.S. where I live called fried green tomatoes.
And they’re pretty good.
But usually, those are for leftover tomatoes
or maybe ones that are just not getting ripe.
But usually green tomatoes or other vegetables
that are not ready to eat yet are called unripe.
Unripe tomatoes or maybe unripe peppers.
They’re not ripe yet.
They’re unripe.
So what if they’re ready to eat?
Well, unfortunately, this one down here is
not exactly ripe, but in maybe another day
or two, if no wild animals eat it first, this
tomato will be ripe.
Ripe means it’s ready to eat.
If you go for a hike and you see a blackberry
bush, and you look at it and they’re so plump
and juicy, you might say, “Oh, perfectly ripe
blackberries.
What a treat.
I can’t believe I found ripe blackberries.”
A great word to use.
What happens if they become black and goopy
and really gross?
Well, those are rotten.
We might say that is a rotten tomato, or those
peppers are rotten.
Don’t eat them.
Maybe some kind of pest got to it, or maybe
it was sitting in some wet soil and it just
rotted.
Sometimes that happens.
Your plants might rot.
A great thing to do with rotten vegetables
or plants is to put them in the compost pile.
So let’s go visit mine.
This is my compost pile.
It’s not exactly what you want to be showing
on YouTube.
It’s kind of like your trash can.
But this is a huge pile of leftover yard scraps.
Whenever we rake leaves in the fall, they
go in here.
It’s food scraps.
There are eggshells.
There’s old potatoes, rotten vegetables from
the garden.
This is a great place to create compost and
compost is wonderful for the garden.
It makes rich soil, like we talked about.
So I have a huge compost pile.
I’m using a non-turning compost method.
Sometimes you have to turn the compost.
It’s a lot of work.
I’m trying not to do that, using another method.
We’ll see if it works.
But something interesting has happened.
I want you to take a look at what you see
in the side of my compost pile.
There is a tomato plant growing out of the
compost.
I didn’t learn this word until last year,
but we call this a volunteer tomato, or a
volunteer pepper, or a volunteer pumpkin.
It means that you didn’t plant it on purpose.
It just grew all by itself because it wanted
to.
It’s volunteering to grow.
So I must have put a rotten tomato in the
compost last year and somehow it survived.
Usually, the compost pile is pretty hot inside.
It’s rotting.
There’s a lot of microorganisms helping to
break down the soil.
But I guess this tomato lived and it’s actually,
it looks nice.
It’s pretty big for being a volunteer.
But there are some problems.
We have rotten spots on the bottom of the
tomatoes.
So it probably won’t produce anything edible,
but kind of cool.
I just put a tomato cage around it because
I thought, “What the heck?
Let’s give it a try and see if we can get
some.”
Can you guess what these are?
Yeah, they’re logs.
It’s just a tree that’s been cut down.
But there’s something special about these
logs.
We have planted mushrooms in these logs…
Hi, kitty…
I have no idea if those mushrooms will actually
work, but I bought some mushroom spores.
This is different than a plant.
It doesn’t have a seed.
It has spores.
And I drilled, I think, like a hundred holes
in these logs down here.
It’s covered in a weed now and some dill.
But I hope that some mushrooms will sprout
out of these logs in the next couple of years.
I don’t know.
Hopefully, we’ll have some cool shitaki mushrooms
in this little mushroom garden.
Another word that I forgot to mention is patch.
Sometimes we use the word patch specifically
to describe a strawberry patch.
So this is a strawberry patch.
We planted about 10 strawberry plants here
last year.
And they exploded.
They went everywhere.
And we got a lot of strawberries in the spring,
early summer.
Now they’re just greenery.
There’s no fruit under here.
But you can use the word patch to describe
a strawberry garden.
We don’t usually say strawberry garden.
We say, “Oh, we’ve got a strawberry patch.”
And behind me, I have some asparagus.
Asparagus is notoriously difficult to actually
grow and get any asparagus from.
So I don’t know if we’ll be able to ever eat
any.
But I don’t know.
It’s an experiment.
It’s all worth trying.
Well, hello there.
This is our little flower garden.
It’s beside our vegetable garden.
And as you can see, it is swarming with bees
and pollinators.
This is excellent for our vegetables.
It’s bringing pollinators to the garden.
Hopefully, it is keeping away any kind of
pests like aphids or slugs.
I don’t know.
That’s what they say about flowers.
But it is beautiful to look at.
And some of these smell great too.
I want to show you a plant that’s super cool.
This is called okra.
And it’s typically grown in the south of the
U.S.
It creates some long pods that you can break
off and fry or sauté.
Some people say you can even eat them raw.
I haven’t ever grown this before, but these
leaves are huge.
And it seems to be doing pretty well.
It thrives in hot, dry weather.
It’s not exactly dry here.
But they seem to be doing great.
And some flowers are coming soon.
I have a little experimental garden over here
I want to show you.
These are vining plants as well, but they
tend to sprawl everywhere.
Can you guess what it is?
I wish it were watermelon.
It’s not watermelon.
We have some of those over here and they’re
really small.
But this is a butternut squash plant and they
get huge.
As you can see, they’re starting to take over
our yard.
But I hope that we’ll be able to get some
butternut squash.
I got these from my neighbors' seeds.
They gave a butternut squash to us and I saved
the seeds, dried them out, and planted these,
and they seem to be thriving.
They’re huge.
They’re doing great.
And we’ve even got some butternut squash.
Let me show you.
Well, thank you for joining me on this tour
of my garden.
It makes me very happy to share this with
you.
This is a peaceful place for me to be able
to enjoy a moment to myself.
So thank you for joining me.
I hope that you could learn some useful garden
vocabulary so that you can describe the world
around you in greater detail, with more precision,
and also just know daily, conversational English.
And now I have a question for you.
Do you have a garden?
Do you have any plants growing in your house
or outside your house?
Let me know in the comments below.
And I’ll see you again the next time, next
Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube
channel.
Bye.
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