this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com,another exciting episode for you today. i’m out here in las vegas, nevada. this is thedesert, or it was a desert before all the people moved in, started building houses andcasinos, and all kinds of crazy stuff. anyways, we’re here today to transform thedesert and make some raised beds in the backyard of a standard residential house. now, herein las vegas they have watering restrictions and actually they pay you to take out yourlawn, so you can get ‘desert landscaping’ and desert landscaping looks like what’sbehind me, just a lot of rocks with barely any greens or barely anything growing. butyou know what, you can grow food out here, and there are places that are doing it, andi have a whole bunch of videos on youtube
already, showing my research because i knewthis project was going to be coming pretty soon, so what i’m doing in this episodeis showing you guys how to start with a backyard that’s basically an abandoned backyard,and take it and get some raised beds up and growing, put some irrigation in, and growsome food, here in las vegas, nevada. so the first step is to find out what materialsare available in the local area to build the raised beds. now, you know, the people inthis area could use blocks, concrete cinderblocks, you could pour some concrete, you could usewood, you could use plastic, you could mound up dirt—there’s a whole bunch of differentthings you could use, but i think one of the project goals is to make it look nice, presentable,and neat and orderly, and also basically grow
a lot of food, so we’re going to first goaround to some of the different stores in the area, including nurseries and big boxstores, to see what kind of raised bed material they’ll have, and also find out—the soil.because if you’re going to invest in growing vegetables at your house in las vegas, letme tell you the first thing: you want to put like 90% of your money into the soil, and10% for the rest of the project. the soil here is absolutely terrible, it’s sandy,it’s not really too rich, so you pretty much need to bring in soil to grow in. sowe also have to find out the best source of soil at an economical, good cost, but alsoorganic as well. so let’s check out this backyard and seewhat we have to work with. the goal is, you
know, get growing, and convert this wholebackyard to a raised bed growing area, or growing some kind of food back here, whetherit’s fruit trees, or raised beds and vegetables….looks like there’s a big overhang thing to workwith or to tear down, but there’s definitely lots of space here where raised beds can beput. there’s these brick walls, you could probably screw them into the brick walls,put a trellis up it, and there’s an alleyway down there, a compost bin, and some trashto get rid of…preexisting date palms, and a stump. so lots of stuff to work with. so next i’m going to start measuring out,get a schematic, make a plan, make a map. we’re here in the garden center inside homedepot, and a question i get a lot is, “john,
what kind of soil are you going to use?â€well, since i’m here in las vegas and working on this project, i don’t have sonoma compost,so we’re going to check out home depot. we’re also going to check out some localgarden centers and see what i’m going to use. so let’s take a look at what they havehere at home depot, and what i would select if i’m gonna use the stuff they have here. so first i’ll walk by everything and seewhat they got, i mean of course they’ve got all kinds of miraclegrow stuff…you know,if it doesn’t even say organic on the package guess what, i’m just walking right by it.now this stuff looks pretty good—1.5 cubic foot kellogg patio plus. it does say 100%natural organic-based dual purpose garden
soil, but uh…let’s keep going and seeif there’s something better. so this is 1.5 cubic feet for 4.97, and thatis kind of expensive, and once again i’m looking for organic, cost-effective, or cheap.here’s another one, 1.5 cubic feet miraclegrow organic choice garden soil, 6.97…that couldbe a contender, but 6.97 for 1.5 cubic feet, that’s kind of pricey. let’s keep on goinghere, some miraclegrow non-organic garden soil 4.77…pass it right up. but here’s one i like a lot, this one’skellogg garden soil, all-natural. 3 cubic feet and you can see here, if it has the [unintelligible]listed, it can be used in organic production, and it has been certified, by true organic.you know, they can use organic on the label
and it might not be really organic, but whenyou see the armory [?] then you definitely know it’s good stuff. so it looks like rightnow it’s on sale for 6.87 for 3 cubic feet, definitely a good deal. let’s take a lookat what’s in there—i definitely always encourage you to read the label and know what you’re eating, you wanna knowwhat you’re putting in your garden. so here the ingredients are composted foresthumus, compost, composted chicken manure, worm castings, kelp meal and bat guano, withoyster, dolemite, and lime as ph adjusters. so to me, that sounds like a pretty good mix,i like the bat guano and the kelp meal, that’s definitely good. and once again, it’s armoryand it’s only 6.87. let’s continue down and see if there’s anything else i’d wantto consider.
alright, nothing else at that good of a pricerange. here’s another kelloggs product, this one’s kellogg enriching soil, and thisone’s 7.87, so it’s a dollar more, 3 cubic feet once again, and it’s armory-listed.let’s see, if we look at the ingredients on this one, looks like it’s pretty muchthe same thing, composted forest humus, chicken manure, worm castings, kelp meal, gypsum,bat guano, and oyster and dolemite. i guess the addition is the gypsum, but this is adollar more, for 3 cubic feet, adds 33 cents a cubic foot. i’m all about price consciousness.and the other one says ‘for vegetables’ and this one doesn’t necessarily say ‘forvegetables’ on it. so that’s another thing, although this stuff would definitely work,but i’m not going to go with it.
let’s continue down and see if there’sanything else that i might want to use. so here’s another option, this one is actuallynature’s way top soil, and it says on there once again a natural organic product, andlet’s see…this one’s 2.62 for one cubic foot, and then finally they have the earthgrowgarden soil, and the garden soil is 2.47, one cubic foot. now i wouldn’t necessarilyjust recommend using a garden soil, i’d encourage you to get compost instead of atop soil or a garden soil, so i think the best deal here at the home depot is that kellogg’s6.86 for 3 cubic feet, that’s definitely the best deal. so if i choose to get it hereat home depot, that’s what i’m gonna get. now we’re outside the local lowe’s andwe’re going to check out once again the
soil to go in the raised beds, and you know,this might look like a lot of work, but you could call them and maybe get correct information,and not see what’s going on and what’s the best thing to use, and all the prices.so going to the store is definitely i think the best thing to do, to flip over the bag,read what’s in there and check out all the prices. so let’s go inside loews and checkit out. so now we’re inside loews and we’re goingto check out the soil here and compare it against what we found at the home depot. here’sthe kellogg enriched armory, but it’s 8.18 and that’s definitely more expensive. they’vegot this other enriched here, and once again that one’s 10.12, and that’s several dollarsmore than the home depot. let’s continue
on…looks like they’ve got similar stuffwith the miraclegrow and the potting soil and the potting mix…let’s continue downand see if there’s going to be anything else a little bit different. aha! they’vegot the square foot gardening soil, but i’m not seeing that, let’s see if they’vegot that one. here’s the organic choice gardening soil, 1.5 at 6.97, that’s kindof expensive. stay green flower and vegetable soil, not organic. i’m not seeing anythingelse here at lowe’s, so we’re going to go to the next place and see if there’sanything better than what we found at the home depot. so we’re here outside the local walmartand we’re going to check out our options.
now i’m not a big super huge fan of walmart,but some of you guys and girls might live in parts of the country where there’s noother hardware stores but you got a walmart nearby, so we’re here to see what’s goodand check out the prices, because i might end up getting all my stuff to fill my raisedbeds at the walmart, but you never know until you check it out. so we’re here inside the walmart gardencenter, and let’s take a look at some of the options here. they have a 100% organicblend 5, includes five of the following organic ingredients: speck on peat, reed sedge peat,forest products, compost, compost manure, topsoil, organic byproducts. it’s 2.78,one cubic foot. i would maybe consider that.
another one i have is this garden composthere. this is one cubic foot. once again, basically it says its composted wood finesand sand. so actually, i like a mixed compost that has more than just wood fines and sand,that’s kind of a joke to me. we don’t want to get a potting mix because we’renot necessarily potting things ups, although you could get them. 10.98, really expensive.i guess the last option here is down over here, it’s this organic choice miracle growstuff, and actually it’s quite expensive, 4.48 cents for one cubic foot of garden soil.so this is all you got at walmart, this organic choice garden soil is probably what i’drecommend. but i encourage to you go a bit further and try to find a lowe’s or homedepot. i think they have a much better selection
than walmart. so we’re here in walmart and they go tanamazing deal on some raised bed kits, so let’s check it out. here it is. stuck in a corner.raised bed garden kit round, there it is. it’s like 48 inch diameter, 8 inches high.it holds an 8.24 cubic foot of soil. it’s definitely good. i mean, it’s round insteadof square, but here’s the kicker. let’s check it out. the kicker is the price, lookat that! 10 dollars. it’s normally $19.97. so it’s half off. so that’s definitelygoing to be really cool. you know, raised bed for 10 dollars in the round. it’ll lookmore stylish although it’s not as space efficient.
so now we’re outside star nursery. it’sa local nursery here in las vegas and nevada. now i encourage you to always check your localnurseries as well as the big box store to see how and where you could get the best dealon the organic compost and other things you’re going to fill your raised beds. so this islike the research state. so before you buy anything, hopefully you do some research onthe product to see if it’s good or if it’s not good. i’m basically here to check outthe different products to compare the prices and also compare what’s in them so i canget the best stuff to go in my raised beds. because you know what, your success or failureis all in the soil. i mean, primarily in the soil. yes, your plants play a small part inwatering. but you know what, your soil could
do you right or do you wrong. so it’s veryimportant to do research and get the best stuff possible. let’s come inside star nurseryand check it out. so here’s our bag product here at star nursery.they got some red start humus grow. it’s all organic mulching material. $4.99 for twocubic feet. and here’s some all purpose potting soil. we don’t want that necessarily.and here’s some stuff, paid or premium planting and mulch. $6.99. either it’s organic…6.99 for two cubic feet. oh and they also have inside a bulk organic compost that didn’tlook finished for me, and that was like 29 50 cubic yards. when they got these cool sackshere, that’s really cool. i wish they had big sacks at this at compost. that’d beactually perfect.
so we’re here in las vegas outside the plantworld nursery. we’re at charleston. huge treat. and actually this is one of the biggestnurseries in las vegas, so hopefully they’re going to have the largest selection and somegood options for me to consider to fill up my raised beds. so let’s come inside andcheck it out. so let’s go ahead and walk into the plantnursery and see what kind of compost and things they sell to fill the raised beds. first,when you walk in you’ll see this display right here. this display basically shows alltheir decorative rock, planters, mix, topsoil, mulch, sand and gravel they sell in bulk.you could order any of these basically in bulk by the yard. and let’s take a lookhere. is the plant world organic soil $28.50
a yard? you’ve gotta get this stuff delivered.they don’t sell it here. here’s a tomato lady mix. 48 dollars a yard. their stuff,actually, you can either get it delivered 48 a yard. if you want to buy it here, it’s60 dollars for a cubic yard. it’s a little bit more, but it’s in a big bag. so we’regoing to go ahead and look at those next. all this stuff here just doesn’t look good.like this compost here. to me, this compost looks more like a mulch instead of a compost.i mean, if it’s compost it’s definitely not finished. there’s too much debris inthere to be growing, in my opinion. all right, so let’s go around the side of the buildingto check out the bulk tomato lady mix. we’re here inside plant world and this isactually one nice nursery. they have lots
of plants. not too many vegetables, but somefruit trees. but even more cool: they’ve got like birds you could check out, and actually,they’re out of a cage, so you don’t want to stick your fingers up there. it’s likea little zoo and nursery all in one. let’s go check out the compost in bulk next. so here’s at plant world, you could actuallybuy the tomato lady organic mix. now that’s not certified, but it has organic in the title.comes in these big containers like we saw a little bit earlier. but this is actuallythe compost. so let’s check it out. you saw, actually, just in the sign we just saw,it was 48 dollars per cubic yard if you buy it for delivery. but once again, there isa 100 dollar delivery charge. and if you buy
it like this instead of 48, it goes up to60 dollars, one cubic yard. so a cubic yard is three feet by three feet by three feet.so they have these guys here, and basically you need to bring a truck here. they’llload that up with a forklift in the back of your truck. then you get to unload it at home.so that’s definitely a good option for me to consider, although i actually don’t havethe use of a truck, so that would be a problem. plus, some people say that the tomato ladyproduct, it’s a trade secret what’s in there. you know, there may be sewage sludgein there! or biosolids. but it’s proven that it works here in las vegas, so it’sdefinitely up to you and your decision if you want to use this kind of stuff. so i’mglad that i’ve learned this, and that this
is an option, but i’m going to continueto check my other options. so next, let’s take a look at some of the bag product thatthey sell here at plant world. so we’re here inside plant world, let’scheck out the bag product that they sell. so here is it right here. it looks like they’vegot a couple different kinds. they’ve got 100% natural and organic happy frog. lookslike that’s 17 dollars and 98 cents for three cubic feet. that’s definitely goodstuff, but that’s expensive stuff! so, let’s continue on. they’ve got this soil buildingcompost, three cubic feet for $10.99. that stuff looks pretty good. contains mycorrhizae,forest humus, chicken manure, worm casting, bat guano, gpysum and kelp meal, oyster shells,dolomite lime. so that’s actually similar
to stuff at home depot that is armory certified.this one is not. here’s yet another option. this one is calledthe harvest supreme. two cubic foot for $8.99. this is basically fir bark, forest humus,rice holds, chicken manure, worm castings, bat guano, kelp meal, oyster shell, lime,and mycorrhizae. so it’s actually similar to the soil building compost, but a littlebit more expensive than 4 50 cubic foot. of course, if you’re doing the square footgardening like i am, they’ve got the mel’s mix. there’s mel bartholomew, inventor ofthe square foot gardening. so i’d probably recommend this stuff. grow well square footgardening soil. 12.88 for two cubic foot. that’s actually quite expensive. let’stake a look at what’s in there and see if
we could make it ourself. so it’s 1/3 peatmoss or core, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 blended compost. so i think the cheapest option forme is to make my mixture myself. so we’re going to go ahead and buy some of those itemsand mix it myself at home. so i’m here at home depot, figuring outwhat i’m going to get. it’s this guy, the kellogs all natural garden soil. and we’regoing to go ahead and load this up on the cart and get a bunch of these and check out,bring them home. definitely good weight in them. probably about 50 pounds each. exercisewhile you garden! all loaded up, let’s check out. so we’re back from shopping. we got allthe supplies. we’ll need to fill the raised
beds and all the supplies to fill the raisedbeds. so it’ll be a really easy build out in this project. first i’m going to go overall the different products by name really quick, then we’ll get close-ups on them.we’ve got the garden soil on here, all natural omri certified. we’ve got some compost.we’ve got the vermiculite, we’ve also got the coconut core. we’ve also got, nextto that, gaia green glacial rock dust. also, we’ve got the azomite, so two differentkinds of rock dust. also we’ve got some organic fertilizer and also we’ve got theraised beds. let’s go ahead, pick up the camera, and show you and talk about each oneof the products that i got to fill the raised beds and why.
so let’s go over these products one by one.as it says on the mel’s mix you saw a little bit earlier, the mixture is 1/3 compost, 1/3vermiculite, and 1/3 peat or coconut core. so this is the first item we’ve got here.this is the compost item. this is garden soil, all natural. bigger, brighter flowers andvegetables, and once again, it’s armory listed. and basically, once again, what’sin here, in case you can’t get this, you want to get something like this. compostedforest humus, compost, composted chicken manure, worm castings, kelp meal, and bat guano withoyster and dolomite lime as ph adjusters. so once again, this is going to make up 1/3of our mixture that we’re going to make. i might put a little more than 1/3 of themixture in there. next, we’ve got the neutral
mulch, all purpose compost. turns dirt intosoil. organic soil conditioner. and weed free sterilized. this is basically turkey manure,and woods chips composted. so the neutral mulch all purpose compost is also going tobe part of the 1/3 of compost. the next 1/3 is going to be the vermiculite. so once againthe vermiculite is armory listed. and vermiculite, certified asbestos free. now the main reasonfor the vermiculite, especially here in las vegas, is the water holding capacity. that’sgoing to hold the water and keep it in the soil instead of letting it drain down. sothat’s actually really important. what’s next is about at least as important, if notmore important than the vermiculite. this stuff is called beet’s peat. this is byplant best, and what this is, instead of using
peat moss, peat moss is a non renewable resource,they’re basically harvesting peat bogs and when it’s gone, it’ll be gone, becauseit’s really taken thousands of years to make the peat bogs. but coconut, on the otherhand, a coconut tree can produce a 100 to 120 nuts per year! and they have all the nutsthat eat the food inside the coconut, you know the water, which is all the rage now!coconut water, instead of gatorade, for your electrolytes. definitely good on a nice hotday when you’re taking a break from gardening. but they have as a byproduct of the coconutindustry, all the coconut core, or the coconut shells, not the actual shells, but the hairthat surrounds the shell, and that’s the coconut fiber. and that’s what it’s inthis beet’s peat. it’s pretty much coconut
fiber. let’s see, it says, absorbs or retainsmore water than peat moss. improves drainage. adds organic matter to any soil. ph neutral.and there you go, check this out. this is just one little small brick here. this brickhere, really small, you literally just add water. and it expands. so look, it says onebag of beet’s peat is equivalent to one cubic feet of peat moss. so not only is iteasier to shift, easier to handle, it’s going to basically be one huge bag of peatmoss alternative. plus, it’s more sustainable. so you can’t beat that. once again, thisproduct is called beet’s peat. next product here, of course. you know i’ma big advocate of rock dust, so every garden i put in, they’ve got to use some rock dust.got the gaia green glacier rock dust. 150
pound bag. of course, next to it, we’vegot the azomites. once again, azomite.com for more information and the azomite is armorylisted as well. next, we’ve got this fertilizer here. kellog’s organic fertilizer. so thisis derived from all natural sources. basically, the reason why i got this, it contains thebeneficial soil microbes and mycorrhizae, so we don’t have any individual mycorrhizaethis time, but we’ve this fertilizer than contains mycorrhizae in it, as well as ithas some kelp meal in there. so that’s the mixture that we’re going to put in the raisedbeds. basically we’re going to put the compost in there, followed by the vermiculite andbeet’s peat. and a little bit of the gaia green and organic fertilizer. and of course,we also need to build the raised beds. we’ve
got these raised garden kits. and we’regoing to try a few of these kits to see how they last. i did do some further researchon amazon, and some of the people that bought these said they didn’t too well. and crackedand broke after like one season. so minimal investment to have some raised beds. you know,once again,10 dollars, if it lasts, great. if not, then, you know, try something else! this is from the smart pot company, if yousaw my other episode at the show. at the trade show, the garden show. here it is. see thelittle tags as the original smart pot? smartpots.com. this product is not yet available, but youcould see here, this is a 4 by 4 bed, and i like this, because this is 12 inches high.and this is actually going to be even simpler
construction than these raised bed gardenkids over there. so another aspect you want to pay attentionin planning your garden is simply this. go out at several times during the day and seewhere the shade is cast. you know, if shade is cast, that might be a good thing, becauseyou may be creating microclimates or plants don’ t like too much soil in order to gettoo hot. that might be good. so we can see here against the wall area, there’s a niceshadow, as well as in this area on the side of the overhang thing, there’s some shading,as well as this part of the yard here. near the house, there’s some trees that are actuallyshading the ground. but once again, the trees you can trim those back to prevent some ofthe shading. if we walk to the other side
of the house, looks like there’s a littlebit of shading underneath this date tree, date palm. and of course, over in this sideof the yard too, there’s some shading from the big overhang. but at this point in theday, which is earlier in the morning, looks like this side of the yard actually gets themost and fullest sun. so if you want to grow things that like a really full sun, this isthe side where it should all happen. so the next step is to basically clear outall this extra brush. it’s just growing out. so what we’re going to do is we’regoing to weed whack, break up all this stuff, get down in the bare dirt. so after weed whacking,we’re breaking up all the materials that we weed whacked. and also raking up all theleaves that are dropping from these trees
above me. now, it’s really important thatonce you weed whack, you just don’t take this and throw it in the garden and take itoff site. this is a valuable resource that you want to use. this is going to get putinto a big compost pile, and guess what’s going to happen? compost happens! haha! sowe’re going to turn this into compost that’s going to end up feeding our gardens, so thisis a really important resource to have. and the interesting thing is, you know, if youlook underneath this tree, it provides a nice shady area, which can be also an asset orbenefit because there may be some plants that want a little bit of shade so they don’tget too hot. but the other thing is that this is a great resource that provides the leaves,which is organic matter. which will then compost
naturally. and it’s really interesting andmost of the yard, it looks like sandy desert soil. but underneath the trees where the leavehave been dropping, it’s a lot darker, rich soil because the leaves have been droppingover the years an d breaking down and composting naturally. and enriching the soil so thatthe tree can continue to grow and also make the soil more fertile. so be sure to use yourorganic resources that you have onsite. i’m currently filling this up into the wheelbarrowhere. and we’re going to dump it in a big huge pile and make a big huge compost pileso that we can generate more soil that we could use here onsite in the raised beds afterthis is all composted. so i got to get back to work. it’s almost lunchtime. i’m goingto finish up this side of the yard and then
hit lunch and then get back to other sideof the yard. so after weed whacking and raking and makinga big cvompost pile, once again, we want to keep all that organic matter onsite to decomposeand build more soil so that we can put that compost on our raised beds later. it’s allcleared. so we’ve returned the desert to the desert! so this land was lying fallow,just raked it all up, and scooped it all out. nice and clean. once again, underneath thetrees in that area there, alittle bit darker. and over on this area, because, you know organicmatter has been decaying and building soil over in that area. so here the desert, onceagain, the soil is not very good. so like i said earlier, you want to spend 90 percentof your money in the soil that you’re growing
in. so that’s why we had to find some ofthe best products to use in this area, from local stores like you saw a little ebit earlier. so the decision was made to clear this landbecause it was weeds. and if we didn’t’ clear the land with the weeds, we built overthe weeds. we’d have a lot of weed seeds that may get into our raised beds, and thengrow more weeds in our raised beds which we don’t want. now i don’t always recommendclearing the land and starting with a clean slate, much like a painter that’s paintinghis next masterpiece. and he starts with a plank canvas. he doesn’t start with a monalisa, and paint over it, right? you start with a blank canvas. so i like in many casesto start with a blank canvas as much as i
can. of course, if you have a lawn, it’snot worth pick axing and shoveling up the whole lawn to start fresh. i recommend inthat instance to just sheet mulch over the lawn and just build your raised beds and getgoing. once again, that is organic matter that will basically decompose and build moresoil underneath your raised beds. so each situation may be a little bit different, andbased on the situation, you need to determine which method is going to be best for you. so the next step after we got our blank canvasis we need to plan. you know i got the blank canvas, i got my paint. now what do i paint?no, he has some kind of inspiration and a plan in his head! maybe he has a nude model!you know that he’s looking at, he’s going
to paint the nude model. you don’t juststart painting cards or something. we have to have a plan for all our empty space now.our blank canvas. so the next step is we’re going to make a plan about what we’re goingto do. and the goal is to maximize the amount of growing that’s going on here, like growin every square inch except if you have to pu tin a walkway to walk by. so i guess thenext step is wer’e going to go inside, fire up that good old computer, go to a websitethat’s going to really help us to plan out this backyard so that we can grow the mostfood here. so the next step after you make the plan ofwhat the backyard looks like, thi sis like that big overhang thing, and here’s thehouse, and here’s the yard, all the different,
you know, spacings laid out. then you’regoing to take this and then input it into a program that will help you plan out yourgarden. and i’m at the webstie of growveg.com, and it gives you a free 30 day trial, whichis enough time to get your garden planned. and besides doing the planning, you’ll alsocalculate how much you can plant and all kinds of other stuff that we’re not going to getinto. i’m just going to simply use it to plan out my garden. it might be worth theirannual subscription cost of 25 dollars. to even go further with this, but i’m justusing it for the planning, once again. they have some videos to show you how to do it.a little demonstration on how to do it. but i’ve already started the planning so wecould go ahead and show you what i’m doing
here. so here’s the basically, we put inthe plan we’ve created. we created little lines to make lines off our area, like exactlythe lines on the paper, we’re just transforming it into a space foot graph. so if you didit old fashioned, you could put this on graph paper, one square equals one foot. but theymake it really easy. so basically, we have the roof top, the patio area, the walkway,the house, and now we have all this space in here to play with. so the raised beds thatyou saw, i’m putting in our 4 by 4 circle. so once you have all your raised beds made,then you’re going to do the raised bed placements in your garden. so you could just basicallyselect the circle by clicking on the lines of the circle. it’ll actually put a couplesquares which are drag bars, so you could
actually drag your circle bigger, but youdon’t want to do that because in this case the raised beds are going to be a 4 foot circle.you’re then going to go ahead and grab the circle by one of the lines and hold down yourmouse button. and you’ll be able to position this circle. so if you want to position ithere, here, wherever you want to do it, then you basically just let go, then click theline again, it’ll deselect it, it’ll put it in place. so the next step is we’re justgoing to create a bunch of circles and then put our circles where we want to put them. so i’ve been hard at work and you can seethis is the plan i came up with. now once you get the plan and space everything outaccordingly. as you know, we have the four
foot round raised beds and basically onceyou take one item, you could just cut it, using the cut scissors, and then hit the pastebutton and paste a lot oft hem so you don’t have to keep making all of them again. reallyeasy. so we just pasted a whole bunch out. we got them all aligned. basically what we’regoing to do is we’re going to have a two foot raised bed along the whole perimeterof the backyard fence. i do that because you can always plan against the fence or the blockwall and grow vertically up. so i always like to use the vertical space against the wallor the fence. this case, its two feet wide. originally started with three, but i had tospace it out differently to make sure all my spacing could fit with all of my circularraised beds. once we did that, then we just
started placing the beds and basically i putabout twelve inches in between the different raised beds, whether it’s the edging orthe other circles in between them. so at the closest point, they’ll be 12 inches, whichis not a whole lot of walking space, so… but then also, because it is a circle, the12 inches expands as you go out further. so what we’re going to do now is take our plan,start building some of the raised beds. it’s very simple, very easy, and we’re goingto actually literally lay out the raised beds, the circular raised beds we’re we want themand kind of see if the twelve inch spacing at the shortest point is going to work orif we’re going to change our design to basically make more walking space. and make it morewalkable friendly.
it’s a brand new day and we’re going toget started once again. the plan’s very important. much like a ship without a runner.if you don’t’ have a plan, you know, you may not end up knowing where you’re going.or what you’re growing! or how you’re doing it! or what’s going to go on, so youmight have all this hodge podge mix match garden beds and things that don’t look exactlynice. so part of the criteria i’d like to install within you is to have some thingsand to grow things that look aesthetically pleasing. because that’ll make the overalllook and feel of the garden just that much better for the person that’s visiting oryou know coming to see it. i mean, it’s just going to look nicer instead of some stuffthat you might see at a community garden when
there’s no or low cost. although you canbuild something nice with no or low cost but that’s a whole other episode. but in anycase, here’s the plan. so what was the decided in order to maximize space and to maximizea cost of this installation, the material that we’re going to use probably is goingto be these guys. these raised garden bed kits that you saw a bit earlier. now they’reonly 10 dollars. so that’s an amazing price for raised garden bed kits. plus the othercriterion was that you know, these are very easy to assemble. you could blow them up,or, i mean, put them up and assemble them very quickly. so how this was designed wasto maximize all the space in the backyard. you could see the rooftop; patio area thatwe’re sitting under right now. in the middle
here the house is over on this side. and basicallywherever there’s some space, there’s going to be four foot round raised bed in that space.the next thing is around the edge of the house, there’s going to be a two foot wide plantingbed. and that’s very important reason; i always like to encourage everybody to growup any vertical surfaces. i mean, a vertical surface is a trellis waiting to happen soi mean you could take some screws and screw some leg bolts into the wood or concrete andthen just pull string. and you could have an easy string trellis, a nicer one wouldbe a wire trellis, which is, once again, bolted in there, stick them out, or some eye bolts.and connect wire to them and make some kind of nice design and grow things up your verticalsurfaces. i mean, that is a resource. so you
know, when planning, i try to take as manyof these resources into account as possible. so that’s why there is a two foot wide bedaround the whole edge to grow vertically up the sides. and also, along each wall, somewalls may get more shade than others. so you should also take into consideration wherethe sun is and which is south facing. so right now, it’s the morning and the sun’s overin the direction. and, you know, certain parts of the yard are going to get more sun, lessshade than others. so that’s definitely a good thing to note too, obviously. someplants that like more sun are fruit bearing plants. so some of the crops that could tolerateless sun and maybe a little bit of shade. you know, you don’t want to plant them infull shade, are things like herbs and the
leafy greens. so of course we’re going toplant accordingly when actually planting after we have all the raised beds built. so i guess the next step, without furtherado. we need to just literally build the beds. so i’m ready to do it, let’s go aheadand show you how to build one of these easy gardener round raised bed kits. it’s reallysimple. so next we’re going to show you how easyit is to assemble one of these raised bed garden kits. you know there are kits on themarket that are square. these happen to be round. these were chosen, number one, forthe price. number two, for how easy they are to assemble. so we’re going to go aheadand unzip this package. and you know, i like
this packaging. it’s not renewable and notrecyclable, but it’s really cool. so maybe this ended up as like, popping some holesin the bottom, filling it up with some dirt, and having a planter that looks like thisthat’ll be clear. i don’t know, it’ll probably break down in a year, but until then,it must be kinda cool. but this is also really useful, which we’lluse in a second, you’ll see. make sure you recycle all your paper, always. so what thiscomes with are some parts. and it’s really simple. you’ve got, basically, four stakesthat are going to go into the ground and also secure the sides of the raised bed. and thenyou have these little plastic things. these are like things that would hold underneathyour fender there and hold, like, the plastic
onto your car. but this is also going to holdthe raised bed together. then you have the raised bed. and it’s bandedtogether with this strap thing. so i guess the first thing to do is undo the strap verycarefully. and when you do, you’ll be able to unroll this. but the problem is—it’sstill all rolled up, because it’s been form fitted in this package for who knows how long,so it’s all wrong. so what you want to do in that case is simply this. you want to takethe package back again, and take this guy. and what you’re simply going to do is you’regoing to simply… so because it was form fitted round, you know it’s not really goingto make a nice circle. it might be kind of a funky circle. so we’re going to take thisand we’re just going to simply pull that
out a little bit and bend this back over onitself, gently. because you don’t want to break it. haha, ouch! all right, as i struggle to bend this overon itself…. aha! okay. so once you’ve got it bent over on itself, once again, you’rejust going to roll it out. slowly and carefully. all right, so now you’ve got it rolled outon itself the reverse way. it’s kind of like a spring under tension. you could getsome clamps and kind of hold it like that. maybe let it hang out like this for 24 hoursor so. but even better, why don’t we just use they gave us? we’re going to put thisback in the bag. and you know, once again, you’re going to want to keep tension onthis, or it’s going to unfurl on you. once
you’re putting tension on it, we’re goingto zip it back up in the bag it came in. all right, that’ll show it. let it hangout in there. and the other way to get some tension off so when you unfurl it it’llbe more of a straight kind of long thing versus all coily, and then building it is going tobe much easier. so these guys have been hanging out inside here for a while to basically reversethe coil that they had. we’re going to go ahead and take this out very carefully. thisis under extreme pressure. so watch out when you dig out. whoa! so there you go. and let’s see, onceagain, we’re going to find two ends where the holes are and we’re just going to takethese little… plastic screw things. and
we’re just going to put them in the holevery carefully. once we’ve put them through one hole, we’rejust going to find the other line of holes and just line this up. push it all the waythrough. once again, very carefully. very simple, very easy. and there you go! so what i’m doing now is setting the fourstakes. there’s four of these stakes that are included with the raised bed kit. andyou want to put those basically four feet apart, and then hopefully what’ll happenis this material will form into the circle that it should be. i don’t if it’ll bethat perfect circle as shown on the front cover of the box, but maybe with time it willbe. but we’ll see.
all right! so we just got this all installed.we’ve got the four stakes in to hold it. it’s actually firm and nice in place. it’snot going to move or go anywhere. but basically the stakes are just to keep it in the rightposition. and you know, i don’t’ know if this over time is going to form a circlelike it should. it’s kind of like a weird circle because the plastic material just doesn’tkind of conform to how it should, so it just doesn’t look like the picture in there.now the choice was made was to go with this material for the raised beds because of afew reasons. number one, they were expensive, number two, you could build them and put themin really fast, no major construction involved, although you did have to do the stakes andthe placement.
the other options may have been like someheavy duty plastic lumber which some people do use. maybe, and some concrete blocks orpouring of concretes as a raised bed. now that can get significantly more expensive,and actually the concrete blocks, they’re probably really good to work with, but youknow, transporting them in you’re car if you need a lot of the, it’s definitely goingto take a bunch of trips. you could actually overload your car, and that’s not a goodthing, or get them overdelivered, which is going to cause extra expense. so this wasthe desired material, and i’m not entirely sold on it at this point. so what we’regoing to do this one staked in the ground. we’re going to set up a few more of theseunstaked and you know with the soil in there,
they’re pretty much going to stay in place.they’re not going to blow away or anything. and we’re also going to use that big bed.and you know, check that out, see how that works. so we’re going to give it a trialrun before we convert the whole backyard over, because we convert the whole backyard overand we have major problems with these, that’s not going to be a good thing if they all startcracking at once. but if we put a couple at a time, and i often encourage people to startslow. by the inch, it’s a cinch, by the yard its harsh. start off with one raisedbed this year. next year, maybe make two or three more. and continue on till your wholeyard is filled up with raised bed and you’re growing lots of produce for you, your family,your neighbors, and everybody else in the
neighborhood. so in any case, i’ve gotta get back to work.we’re going to go ahead and blast a couple more of these up. just place them where weneed to place them and we’re going to fill them up and get planted. so you can see here we’ve got all our raisedbeds in place. this one staked, these two are not. we also got this bad boy. this iscalled the big bag bed, by smart pot. and you know, check by the videos for the videoon setting this. this is definitely really cool, really easy. cool and fun. this one’sall ready to go. so now we have to set up these guys here.
so you saw all the stuff we’re going toput in the beds. now, if i got to reiterate anything in this video: spend 90 percent ofyour money, especially here, in last vegas, on your soil. this soil right here, this iscrap! nothing really grows, even the lawns, they fertilize the hell out of it. i mean,this is really, this is pretty much no organic matter and it’s not too good a soil. soif you do want to grow in this, you gotta use all kinds of chems, fertilizers, whichi don’t recommend. so invest in your soil over all else. so i mean, these beds were10 dollars, but the soil that’s going in the beds cost a lot more than the raised beditself. so we’re going to use the organic compost, omri certified. we’ve got the vermiculite,then we’ve got the coconut core. we got
some additional compost to put in there. andwe’re basically going to fill this up. each one of these hole up about 9 cubic feet. so the mixture is simply this. we’re goingto do 3 cubic feet of coconut core. two cubic feet of vermiculite, and all the rest compost.also, we’re going to add in the rock dust. so next, we need to get the coconut core brewing!so this is a coconut core. now the coconut core is much better to use than peat moss.so in mel bartholomew’s’ book, the square foot gardening, which i do recommend you read,if you haven’t. that’s the system i use of the most part. square foot garden is basicallygrowing in nutrient rich soils so you could plant crops a lot closer together than theywould in a field. thereby, you could yield
more, even in something like a small backyardsuch as this one. so getting the mixture is really important.he calls for peat moss or coconut core. and the primary focus and reason for these guysis to hold the moisture in the ground so the plant roots can have the moisture it needs.especially if you’re in las vegas, it’s really dry. and no water and dryness is nopefor your plants. they’re not going to make it. these come compressed. coconuts, onceagain, are a renewable resource. one coconut tree can put out 120 nuts a year. the waterin the coconut, once again, drank for electrolytes, the food, the meat of the coconut is alsoused as a food. but then the waste product of that industry, the coconut shell, whichthey make candles and other decorations, bird
houses, out of. but the core. and a lot ofcore is generated. basically goes into these products. so it’s a renewable resource,unlike the peat bogs, which it takes thousands of years for the peat to accumulate. and onceall the peat bogs are gone, guess what, they’re gone. they’re not growing back. so i encourageyou always to use renewable resources like this. the problem with this, guys, and itsreally nice because this small brake is three cubic feet. but this unexpanded, so we needto soak this in water. so let’s show you how to expand this beet’speat coconut core. first you’re going to just want to first rip the package open usingan exacto knife. whenever using any tools, be very careful not to cut yourself. thatcould definitely wreck your day. in any case,
once we’ve got this package open, you’regoing to see inside the package… they give you a couple different bricks, and it’sa little bit dusty, haha. so you could see there’s a few bricks. there’sfour bricks in here. so if you’re going to use one at time, two or all four, we’regoing to actually use all four. so it’s best to break this up into small pieces whendoing this. it’s just going to work a little bit better and work faster. really easy todo. and give your wrists some exercise. once again, what we’re doing is we’rebreaking this up. the more surface area that you could create or the more edges on this,the faster it’s going to absorb water, and the faster this is going to be done. if you’retotally lazy, you could just pour water over
the whole blocks, and it will expand, butit’s going to take you a little bit longer. and you know what, i don’t like wastingany time. but you could let this soak and go do other stuff. but i need this to be readynow. al right, i’ve got a better way to break this up than break with your hands.use a utility knife. score on one side, and scored on the other side. check it out. comes right apart. really easy,really simple. learn as you grow, that’s my motto. you’re doing something in yourgarden, or whatever you’re doing in life, always thing of a way as your doing the taskto make it better or to improve yourself. so if you improve every day, you’re goingto be a lot better at doing everything in
life, and i strive to do that in every areaof my life, not just gardening. in any case, all right. there we go. there’sall the blocks, tore her up. next you’re going to add five or six gallons of water.so once again, we’ve got a great use of a five gallon bucket, used to measure outfive gallons of water. if you haven’t seen my other videos on the many uses of a fivegallon bucket in gardening, check it out. it’s definitely a fun one. i loved makingthat video. let’s go ahead and pour this so that’s five gallons. let’s go ahead,let this down a little bit more. all right. we’re going to go ahead and let that brew.we’ll be back at you in a little bit. after it’s been soaking for a little bit, i’mgoing to take the flag shovel once again.
and just mix this stuff up. trying to breaksome of this stuff up. the stuff in the bottom is getting, working pretty well. but there’sstill some stuff on top that really needs to get submerged, you know, to totally dissolveand expand. because, you know, if you don’t let this expand enough, you’re going toput in blocks, it’s not going to be very effective as a soil medium. you really wantto get all this broken up and then mixed into the mixture that’s going into the raisedbeds. so you want to spend some time making sure all of this is broken up. and also havesome patience to let it just kind of act on its own. so i’m going to let this soak whilei go ahead and work on some other projects so our core is pretty well soaked. the nextstep is we’re going to start filling up
this first raised bed. you know, once again,mel recommends one third vermiculite, one third coconut core, or one third peat moss,and one third compost. that’s three cubic feet of coconut core. we’ve got two cubicfeet of vermiculite here. i kind of like coconut core more than vermiculite, so if i put anyextra, i’m going to put in some extra coconut core instead of the vermiculite. once again,this bed holds almost nine cubic feet. so once again, i like to put the vermiculitein first. it’s blowing and dusty. always best to stand up with this stuff soit’s not blowing in your face as your putting it in. this is an omri and asbestos free.so once we’ve got that in there, we’re going to go ahead, take our coconut core,and if you add too much water, you’re going
to have to carry extra weight. so you knowwhat, working at the garden is much better than working at the gym. next we’re goingto dump this in at the top. that way it’s going to help to soak up all the vermiculiteso it doesn’t fly everywhere when your mixing it. tap that down. next step. get the shovel, mix it up. so i go that kinda mixed up. the next stepis we’re going to add the rest of the ingredients. so once again we’ve gotta use the rock dust.once pound per one square foot. definitely is what is recommended. you can tell i liketo measure really well. to me it’s just add liberally, hah! as much as you can afford.next we’re going to add this neutral mulch, all purpose organic compost. probably abouta square foot in there. rest of this bag…
into the mixture. so next we’re going to add the three cubicfeet of garden soil. cut that open. now you gotta be careful with these edges. you don’twant to lean tools on it, you don’t want to step o nit, you don’t want to drop abag on it, it’ll probably break. that’s another reason why i like the big bag bedbehind me. i mean, it won’t break! haha. let’s go ahead and carefully put that inthe middle there. all right. there’s all that. so this wasthree cubic feet of compost. about one cubic foot of the other compost. two cubic feetof the vermiculite. and three cubic feet of the coconut core. i don’t know, it doesn’tlook quite full yet, so we’re going to add
more coconut core and compost to get it alltopped off. then wer’re going to mix it up. as you can see, got this bed filled up. man,it’s getting hot here in vegas. one of the tips, if you are a gardener in vegas: startearly. start at sunrise when the sun just gets up. it might be a little bit cool, butdefinitely in the midday, it gets really hot in vegas. so, gotta thank my brother for thissnazzy cool jacket he got me. actually i like it a lot, looks pretty sport to be gardeningin, but i’m going to go ahead and take that off. get back to work, i gotta fill up twomore raised beds, bust those up, and then we’re going to start playing.
so i’m just mixing up the rest of this mixture.and what you want to look for, you know, this is a nice spongy, not even sandy, sandy istoo fine. you want it spongy, because that’s what’s going to hold the water, especiallyhere in the desert. if you live in a wetter climate, you know you might want it to draina little bit more so your plants basically don’t get root rot. so every climate isgoing to need a little bit different soil mix, but the 1/3 1/3 1/3 works pretty wellin most places. so besides working with the shovel, i haveto work the earth with my bear hands. and don’t be afraid to get your gloves dirty!that’s why you’re wearing them! all right, so we’re going to finish off, basicallygetting this raised bed flattened out. the
soil level. and it is time for lunch. afterlunch, we’ll be back to plant. so now that we’ve got all the raised bedsbuilt, we’re going to start planting. so i’ve got all these plants that got peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, some watermelon,some herbs, and also some tree collards. pretty much we just need to figure out the spacing.so once again, i’m using square foot gardening spacing. some tools that’ll help you plantare simply this: a ruler, in inches. that’s one foot spacing. anything smaller than 1foot spacing, you can measure out. i’ll just have a large yard stick, if you needto use spacing more than 12 inches, this makes it a lot easier. two tools i like to dig upthe soil with either this. and in some cases i just like to use a ball planter to dig outa nice hole, pop the plant in there, and you
know, put the soil back in there. so reallyeasy, once again. and i want to mention that i a m growing plants that i have seen personallygrow well. i know will grow well for the most part in las vegas. now, some of them are experimental,but you know what, that’s how it goes. you want to play with gardening have fun. be likea child again. in any case, it’s getting a little bit hotout here. and it’s time to take off all my clothes! isn’t it that song? it’s gettinghot in here… take off our clothes. now, you always want to dress appropriately forgardening, especially if the sun’s out. don’t feel wrong unless you’re a girl,i guess, and you’re gardening in your front yard, to take off your shirt, because thesun provides off with free vitamin d, and
there is a big vitamin d deficiency in theu.s. and probably in other parts of the world too. because people are scared of the sun.now you don’t want to get too much sun and get burned, but a little bit sun is only agood thing. so next i’m going to go ahead and lay outmy plants and we’ll come back at you. and we’ll show you the layout, and i’m’going to get planting. so here’s the first bed. this is the herband perennial bed. so i got the two tree collards on either side. another tree collard thatmay or may not make it and some herbs spread out. i generally like to get all the spacingand put the pots where they’re going to plant. so once i have it all laid out, it’sreally easy. just go ahead and dig a hole.
pop the plant in there. water really good.and you’re all finished. very simple, very easy. so you can see we got everything planted out.this is basically the perennial bed and mixed bed with herbs, tree collards, artichoke,and some herbs. this one’s a pepper bed. i think there’s about 16 pepper plants,1 foot spacing. this is a tomato bed. i planted them a little closer than i would have liked.the bed’s a little bit small. i think we’ve got pretty good spacing on that. over on thisside, we have the eggplant, tomato, and pepper beds. some overflow. and i actually boughtway too many plants. the next thing is we need to hook up to thefaucet. we’re going to use this gilmore
9400 water timer hooked up to the faucet,then we’re going to run our drip irrigation out to it. so next we have to do the watering system.here’s the faucet for the outside. i have a splitter going into 4 nice heavy duty unit.here’s a water timer that we’re going to set up and water the vegetable garden.first, this is the gilmore 9400 model. i like this model. number one, because it has a ballvalve. so it’s a really durable model. here’s the ball valve right here. you can actuallyjust activate it manually, and take your timer off for the winter time. or even take thisoff for the winter time. this is much more durable than the diaphragm style, you know,valves that are available. so we’re going
to go ahead and put that back in. i do recommendthat you use some brand new alkaline batteries. i like using rechargeable batteries a lot,but the alkaline batteries, and brand new ones too; they’ll be going cheap than usingsome old ones. because this is your water. i mean, to your plants, water is life, andif it doesn’t get water because you’re using older batteries or they don’t lastas long, then that’s not a good thing. the lucky thing is does have a low batteryindicator. and as soon as it says low battery, then you want to change it. and there it is.you can hear it turning right now. let’s go ahead and put this back together and getit all set up. right, so once you’ve got the batteriesin, it’ll tell you on here; it’ll ask
you to set the time and the date and everything.now let’s see, it’s really easy to set, just use the little buttons. so then you’regoing to have to program it. you might need to read the manual. i’m familiar with this,so i’m just going to program it really quick. so i’ve got it all programmed, we’re goingto close the lid. we’re going to screw on this valve here. make sure this is sealedtight so it doesn’t really leak. all right, so that’s how easy it is to get a watertimer, set it up, put it on. now the harder part is get it all connected to the drip irrigationtube. so we have the drip tube right here. but you know, we need to convert this faucetover to this drip tube. so we’ve got a couple things here. we’ve got this packet and thispacket includes a filter. so i highly encourage
you to use a filter when you’re using adrip irrigation, so your emitters don’t get clogged up. here it is right here. andwe could unscrew that. and there’s the filter inside. now at a later point, i will be upgradingthis filter to like a carbon block filter that’s going to remove more than just thesediment. so for now, we’re going to go ahead andscrew that up. make sure it’s tight. and then in this kit here, this is filter. andit includes several different parts. some of the parts include… this, which is required.you shouldn’t be doing drip irrigation without it. this is a one way flow valve. so thisis going to basically take your standard hose pipe connection, spin that on, and these areplastic fitting, so you want them tight, but
not over tight or you could bust them out.and this basically, make sure the water only goes one way, it doesn’t go back into yourhouse. because if the irrigation is buried, dirt gets in there, it could actually go inyour house. that’s not a good thing. one way valve, that’s very important. so i like to basically make these hand tight.if you use a wrench and tool, then you might over tighten and risk splitting the fittingsactually, which is not a good thing. and you don’t want it to be loose, or else you’regoing to leak. most of these fittings have, like, rubber washers like your hose, so they’regoing to be fairly leak proof. some of them don’t. so this goes to a regular fittingthat doesn’t have a washer. so we’re going
to use some teflon tape to seal up the threads,to make sure there’s going to be no leaks. teflon tape is really easy to use. just putit on and wrap it around a bunch of times. and then it’ll basically take up the gapsin the hose pipe. so that you don’t get any leaks. i like to run that around a wholebunch of times, but not too much. there we go. then we’re going to go ahead and putthis on. tighten that up. we’re going to give that an extra tight turn with the wrenchthere. can’t really turn too well without it. what this is a standard pipe thread, thisis converting over the hose style thread to the adaptor that’s actually going to goto the filter we’re installing. i think
that’s fairly tight there. next, we’regoing to go ahead and install the filter. the filter, you want to make sure it’s goingin the right direction. so the direction for the filter is this direction. next, we’regoing to go ahead and put some teflon tape of the filter threads. now, if you’re not too handy with this stuff,you know, go to your local home improvement store and ask them for help. because you cando it and they can help! that’s their motto, anyways. but often when i go to those bigstores, you never find a guy to help you out. and you know, if you do have a question, halfthe time they can’t help you anyways. i’d rather figure it out myself, it’s usuallyfaster actually, than trying to find a guy
and figure it out. but if you truly don’t know, then you know,definitely get some help. this stuff is really simple. it’s not rocket science. you know,we’re not blasting it to the moon. we’re just putting some teflon tape onto this fitting.so it’s going to make a good connection and not leak too much. and you know, if youdon’t get enough teflon tape on there, it does leak a little bit, it’s not the endof the world. you could take it apart and do it over. or if you just let it leak, actually,plants that have things below the leaks, haha, you know, that would be a good idea! freewater. so next, let’s go ahead and screw this onein. once again, we’ve got to hold this guy
while we’re doing it. all right, it’sall getting tighter. i love tight fits! oh yeah! all right. that’s pretty darn tightthere. i think we’re good. got this facing in the right direction. it’s all good. so,once you’ve got that all set up, the next step is really easy. you’re going to geta piece like this. and this connector basically goes onto this end here, and it has a rubberwasher in here, so it’s going to prevent leaks, so you don’t even need to use a toughone. and we’ll just put that in. screw that in really tight. and on the backof this connector, basically, it has the adaptor so that you could put this hose right intoit. so let’s do that next. now the other thing, when you’re buying this hose stuff.i recommend using this size, it’s either
the half inch or five eighths inch tubing.you know, i don’t recommend using the quarter inch tubing, it’s beginning tubing, andthat’s probably what they’re going to recommend you at the hardware store. it can’tflow as much water and it’s just a pain in the butt. so you know, spend a little bitmore, get the good stuff. i mean, this serious stuff that landscapers and farmers use. theydon’t get that cheap stuff. all right. so there’s the hose. wanna makesure the hose is clean when you put it on there. and it’s really simple. once youget this in, i mean, all you literally do is you take the hose, push it in where itshould be, and you wobble it back and forth, and it’ll go in. so there’s differentsizes in these hoses, and they may be off.
you could tell by the different color of thetip. this is a black tip. this is the .700 size, and this is the size i like to use. so once again, you just wiggle that in. andit goes in. and you’re ready to go. so now what we’re going to do is roll this outto the raised beds, do some connectors, split it to four different raised beds, and getour watering set up. really simple, really easy. you know, the most hardest part is toset the timer up and to get all these adaptors, but once again, by this kit i did, it’sgoing to come with all the stuff you need. makes it really simple. so now i’m putting in the drip irrigationsystem. basically it’s just running the
pipe, the tube around each plant. we’rejust making spirals around each bed. let’s see. this stuff will kink, so if you do wantto do a corner, you need to do a corner cut and then put in a corner versus trying tolike make it a corner. if you try to make it a corner, it’ll get cut off on water.so luckily because these raised beds are circular, we’re able to go in concentric smaller circles,or like labyrinth style loop, to the end, and we’ll get all the plants watered. onceagain, i mean, this is really simple to use. it’s like when you were a kid, you usedto put two straws together to drink the water of your glass when its further away from you.same exact thing. you just use these connectors. waddle them in, get it connected. and onceagain, we are doing this temporary setup here
just to get everything. make sure it has water.because we’re going to test these beds, see if they hold up. if they hold up, thenwe’ll probably roll out the rest of the yard with these raised beds. if not, thenwe’ll find another alternative, in which case, we’ll do the whole irrigation system.you know, a little bit more professional than this time. this drip pipe is fairly inexpensive. it was7 dollars and 50 cents for 100 feet of it, and some connectors, they’re about a dollareach. the filter was about 10 dollars, and the timer, they’re about 40 dollars. soyou know, this is fairly inexpensive to set up. and everybody should be a on a drip system,because it saves water and you don’t have
to baby your plants, you don’t want to worryabout watering them, because it’s going to come on as much as you need it to. so next we’re going to finish up this. theni gotta do a pressure test on the line. and then actually we’ll flush the line first.we’ll turn it on and make sure all the water comes off on one side. then we’ll put acap on it, we’ll pressure test, make sure there’s no leaks. then and only then willwe put the drippers on. so i do want to say that stakes are your bestfriend. basically we used almost 20 stakes per bed, and that’s because the hose, whenit comes in a roll is kind of conformed to that shape, and the sun hits it and it kindof warms up. you know, you’re going to need
a lot of stakes. so don’t go skippy. buythe stakes. and later on, you know the season after the pipe conforms to the beds, thenyou can remove a lot of them and reuse them. but until then, buy your stakes. so what we did is we ran the ends, so allthe water had to go through the hole system and purge out any dust, dirt, or debris. thatwas fine. we then closed it off, turned it on, did a pressure test. i see no leaks, sothe next step is we need to put the drip emitters in. now, putting drip emitters in is veryeasy. and all you’re going to do—we’ve got these drip emitters. and i’d like todig brand ones, i’m going to have other videos on this. with more about specific irrigation.this is kind of like an overview video. you
basically get a tool, this is a cheap tool,they have a more expensive tool. but basically you just pop a hole in the drip tube, andpush this in. you’ll hear a little snap. and you’re ready to go. so i got a lot ofwork to do. let’s see how many packs i used. they come in packs of 100, for the best value.you could also buy them by the back of 5, 25, i think maybe 50, too. once again, this is dig brand. you could actuallyopen this one up to clean it. you know, most of them are sealed units. and once they clogup, you gotta toss them. but i like this brand because you can open them up. nothing feels better than a project all finished!got all the irrigation in, put all the drippers
in, pretty much used a little bit over 100drippers! put two on some of the tomatoes, one dripper on everything else. we’re setup on the timer. the initial timer went off, so i tested it. it’s working functionally.turned itself off. looks really good. so we got the marigolds planted also to make itlook nice and also be functional. and also, they’re edible, so i really love the marigolds.so how long did all this take? really, once all the materials were sourced, it reallytook one day to put it all together and get it all planted out, including the drip irrigationsystem. granted, i have done this before, so it might take a little bit longer. on agood weekend, you could get four raised beds, plant it all out. of course, you know, theshopping can take some time too, to get all
your materials together. we’re not countingthat right now. in any case, it’s really easy to build raisedbeds. you saw the whole process here in this one video. so i hope i motivated you to showyou how easy it is so that you too can grow more food at home. once again, this is johnkohler with growingyourgreens.com, we’ll see you next time! and, keep on growing!