john: alright, this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com,today i have another exciting episode for you and this is a visit to a viewer’s house.i love when i get to go on field trips and visit viewers, that are also growing food.actually it was really cool to know that i’m inspiring many people out there and maybeeven you guys out there and that people are growing food because of me. but not only thati love visiting viewer’s houses to see what everybody’s doing, because everybody mightnot grow exactly like i do. what i do works for me, but there’s many ways to grow food,and at this homeowner’s place, well they’re not growing in their front yard, actuallythis is the best side of the house to actually get sunlight but the problem with the frontyard is that they have a few trees here that
they don’t wanna cut down. so i’d probablyencourage them to at least hack down one of the trees to grow some crops in the placewhere its gonna get the most sun. so what they’re doing instead is growing in thebackyard and uh you know, if you’re a homeowner generally you don’t have a problem buildingraised beds and you know putting in and making improvements to your land to do what you wantwith your property and you know they didn’t necessarily wanna do that here so actuallythey’re growing in all containers which is quite a unique thing. now whether you’rerenting or owning you can always grow in containers they’re easily moveable and you know theyhave a few reasons for doing this so what we’re gonna do next is actually head intothe backyard and show you guys what’s growing
on in this viewer’s house. now we’re inside the backyard and here isthe garden you can see behind me and literally all it is, it’s in 15 gallon containersand you know its on top of pallets and this cool structure for a trellis. now you mightbe asking yourself “john, why would homeowners have a garden like this, it’s just in pots.â€well there’s a few good reasons for that, number 1: say its may and you should havehad your plants in already, and you wanna grow a garden but you don’t have to likestart building the raised beds, constructing them, screwing, drilling, sawing. then yougotta worry about filling them up and you know you might have to make one too big andit might not be just the right area that you
want cause the sun might not hit it properlyor whatever. so what they came up with, as a solution is this! they’ve literally got15-gallon pots and filled it up with soil cause each pot can be moved to where the sunis if they needed to. they put it on top of pallets so that you know the grass wouldn’tgrow up through and the roots wouldn’t grow down into the grass. and so they could alsomove the pallets and they get it off the ground to you know uh resist the insects, the slugsand snails, which are pretty prevalent in this garden. they say they haven’t had anydamage to their plants because it’s off the ground, and in pots, which is really cool.and so and they’re growing a lot of stuff. so what we’re gonna do next is actuallyshow you guys just some of the things that
are growing. its pretty much the end of thesummer season, they’ve still got a few things hanging on, but mostly we’re gearing uptowards the fall and winter garden. and here in northern california, you can definitelygrow year-round. and you wanna grow your greens, just like my channel name growingyourgreens!you wanna grow your greens in the wintertime; you can easily grow greens all throughoutthe winter here in northern california. so let’s take a look at a few of the summercrops that are hanging on and all the winter greens and varieties, a few i’ve never seenbefore that’s happening in this backyard. alright, i know you might be thinking, “john,what’s that crazy structure here that they’ve got happening?†well this is a unique trellisingsystem that they came up with. you know it’s
basically a fairly inexpensive, and once againdisassemble-able and move-able system, just in case they wish to do something later withit. they’re basically using some standard, construction grade 2x4’s nothing special.they’ve got a couple simpson strong-ties to lock in the corners, so it’s a nice stablestructure. i don’t know that i’d climb up there, but its definitely gonna hold thesupport beams up there. and then they basically have this stuff right here; this is the nylontrellis netting that i like so much. i’ve had previous episodes on it. it comes in alittle package and then it unfurls into a four foot by i don’t know eight or a fifteenfoot or even thirty foot section and usually i use them going the other direction but they’reputting them up all the way. and you can see
here they’ve got some nice japanese cucumbersgrowing up the trellis here. two plants, ones actually topping out and still flowering outhere. they have already pulled out their tomatoes this year and still got some peppers hangingon here. we’ve got probably another month of growing here depending on the weather forthe summer crops. but aside from that they’ve started planting out their wintergreens. sowhat we’re gonna do next is actually go over how they have this system laid out includingthe irrigation because that’s very important for you guys. i encourage you guys to makea full complete system. so that you have the greatest possibility of success when growingyour own food, so what is a system, a system is something that’s gonna work no matterwhat. if you show up or not. i wanna job where
i can shop up to work or not! anyways, souh what we’re gonna do next is, we’re actually gonna start actually at the uh hosebin and show you guys what they have to control their system and then we’re gonna show youthe specific drip irrigation that they have happening to make all of this get watered,whether they’re here or not. when putting in a raised bed garden or evenjust a container garden like this one i highly encourage you guys to put in an irrigationthe first time otherwise you gotta come home you gotta water you gotta remember to waterand you, basically you’re married to your garden cause you can’t go on vacation, becauseif you don’t water, who is gonna water? so, something like this, a drip irrigationthat’s gonna save you water and actually
water automatically is very important andcritical to have in my opinion. so you can see here they’ve got this standard hosebib and this is their hose, when it comes out bit you usually put a hose in here tohand water which they do have. it goes through a pressure regulator, this is very importantfor a drip system to regulate the pressure. i personally do with ball valves or you couldjust get a standard pressure regulator that will drop down the pressure to say 25psi andthen they have basically a converter to basically take it from one into four so they can haveone into the hose and one into a water timer. this is a very important device that controlswhen your watering system will come on so that you don’t have to be around. just makesure to change your batteries every once in
awhile, you know to keep it running causeyou know if your batteries run out then the system won’t work anymore. sometimes theyuse a 9 volt and sometimes they use the double a’s and actually i prefer the water timersthat have a ball valve, they are a lot more uh durable than the ones that have the otherkind of valves, the diaphragm valves. so uh, basically the water comes in there’s a littlevalve in here that controls the on and off there’s the little batteries and when itstime it will go on and then the water will go out this blue hose here and transfer intothe drip system. so let’s go ahead and shows you where it transfers out here out of theblue line and then into the drip system. how it does that and how actually also, somethingelse they have in line that you may also wanna
buy as well. so they have that blue hose thatgoes through like a particulate filter and then it goes into a green hose which is thisguy right here. and actually they’re using some good quality hose i discourage you guysfrom using stuff like vinyl tubing. vinyl tubing is made out of pvc or polyvinyl chloride,not a good hose to be using. i highly encourage you guys to use rubber hoses whenever possible.my favorite rubber hose is a standard craftsman rubber hose; they have a stainless steel end.they’re very indestructible and they have lifetime guarantee. in any case, it goes outof the blue hose into the green hose, and then they go into this guy right here. thisis actually called the ‘garden grow’ garden dechloro-nator with replaceable cartridgeby ‘rain shower’ so i had one of these
guys or filters on a recent episode, i don’tknow about four episodes back or what not and these guys can rang in price anywherefrom 40 to 100 dollars, the one that i recommended a couple shows ago was about 40 bucks andi think this is an excellent device to have. its gonna basically take out the chlorineout of your water, now these things are effective with chloramine, that’s a different thingentirely. but these are effective with chlorine, they take the chlorine out, cause the chlorineis added to the water to disinfect it so that we don’t get waterborne diseases like amoebasand crypto(spridium)? and bacterias and whatnot, so we have sterile water, but the problemis the chlorine can negatively impact your soil and your soil microbes and beneficialfungis and bacterias in the soil. so we don’t
want that so, we definitely wanna get a gardendechloro-nator. in addition on their standard line, on thisside, which is their standard garden hose, they also have a dechloro-nator also. so ihighly recommend you guys to dechloro-nate your water and filter your water before puttingit on your garden for the best results and you don’t have to do this but i highly encourageyou guys to do this. and i filter all the water the goes on my garden because my gardenis that important to me. they have after the filter here is where the hose goes in andthen out of the filter it has a little adaptor that is just a standard threads for a gardenhose but then it converts it down into the drip emitter tubing and i think they’reusing half inch tubing and then this tubing
runs to the different beds or their containersthat they have. each bed is like one pallet or a set of pallets that they have stackedup together. so next we’re gonna show you guys how that runs, and then how it actuallyruns into each fifteen-gallon pot. we’re following the irrigation which isthis pipe right here. this is actually not a pipe it’s an edging which actually runsout right here and then their tubing goes right here and you know pretty much just likewhen you gotta plug in a few appliances you have know like a uh multiple outlet stripwell with hose irrigation you’ve got splitters, so basically you ‘t’ this off, this isliterally a ‘t’ and uh they ‘t’ it off right here, it goes and continues on thisdirection. and goes over to the beds over
there with those containers. and then theyuh ‘t’ed off and this goes this ways and they have an uh valve on it, so like if theywanna turn off watering this bed cause its getting enough water for whatever reason theycould do that. so i highly encourage you guys to do that, to use some valves in line soyou could turn off certain beds when needed. this can also reduce the pressure and flowif you don’t want to water as much this is a ball, ball valve, so you can turn itall the way. all the way is off like that and if you turn it like that direction itsgonna reduce the water pressure a little bit. but uh we’re gonna leave it on cause that’sthe way i found it. it then goes over and then goes up into this bed, as you could seeand then basically this is the main feeder
line. so they’re using the half-inch andthen the convert down into the quarter inch spaghetti tubing. now, while i don’t likethis tubing, they found it to be the best for their specific application and this spaghettitubing has built in emitters every six inches. and uh this seems to be working great forthem. and they have different spaghetti tubing going for each separate row, and then in thecase like this, they pop the spaghetti tubing up and then it goes, up, up, up, up, up, upover and then they bend it over each of the lips here of the container, the fifteen galloncontainers and then they make a little circle loop thing. so this little circle loop thingis probably i don’t know about 14 inches in diameter and then there’s little dripemitters every six inches here so it actually
makes a good radius and actually will dripthis one container fairly well. and basically all the lines that they havehere, here’s where it ‘t’s off again. one goes one way and one goes the other wayand they’ve got a whole bunch of these t’s and they’ve laid it out pretty good andonce again, doing this above ground, as long as you don’t kick it and it doesn’t getknocked or anything is definitely a good thing to do because it’s a you know it’s a non-committalgarden. if you have commitment issues you can do the aboveground drip emitter just don’tkick it or trip over it and it should work out fine for many years. and once again youcan see here they’re just t’ing off and going up with this spaghetti tubing and havethat little circle here. and then they’ve
mulched conveniently with leaves and thatcan definitely conserve water in your garden. so you guys just saw how the irrigation systemwas put in now water is probably one of the most important things for your plants justto keep them alive, just like we need water, we’re 75% water, plants also have a veryhigh water content, so we gotta keep them watered. and i highly encourage you guys toput in an irrigation system. so aside from the water, we’re gonna show you actuallyhow they’re doing it here and how they’re growing all these beautiful vegetables inthe backyard. so the first thing they is they actually decided where they wanna put it andfigured that out, and then they got some cardboard and this is a technique called ‘sheet mulching’,literally you’re mulching with cardboard
over sections of grass to basically smotherthe grass out, so the grass doesn’t grow through the cardboard. then they laid downa standard shipping pallet. these may be available on craigslist for free or maybe your localwork has a ton of extra pallets they don’t need. and what the pallet does, this providesa layer of, number one air circulation, but number two it’s a layer of protection sobasically the grass and things can’t grow up into the pot and the things in the pot,the roots and what won’t grow out of the pot and then into the ground. also it is reallybeneficial for isolating your plants from uh bugs and pests. they say they don’t getany bug or slug damage because it is isolate off the ground like this. so i definitelythink that’s very smart and i haven’t
seen it done like this anywhere before. next they have your standard 15 gallon nurserypot, if you go to like a big box store these guys can be very expensive but if you orderthem online or go to a specialty nursery store you can often times get these for very inexpensive.even better yet, call up some local landscapers and in your area and ask them “hey whatdo you guys do with the uh you know some of the pots you put the trees in after you plantthe trees out, can you save em for me?†and you know a lot of those guys burn throughtrees cause they’re putting in landscapes and they have all these extra pots and a lotof times they just chuck them out but maybe you could get them for free and literallyhave a free garden that way. some of these
pots are really nice, they hold 15 gallonsand when you’re growing for vegetables basically you need a nice wide diameter pot as wideas possible and you really don’t need it that deep. these are probably actually toodeep but these are the closest size that they could find probably with a good circumferenceand also not too deep of a depth. you pretty much don’t need anything more than about12 inches in my opinion and anything over that, these are probably i don’t know uh18 or so that’s alright but you may be wasting extra soil cause the plants aren’t necessarilygonna root down that deeply. so they’ve got a 15-gallon nursery pot, nice wide diameterand what they’re growing in each pot is a little bit different. this one actuallythey have brussels sprouts, a nice healthy
looking plant here and along the edges aroundthe brussels sprouts which are growing up in the middle, they’ve got some beets growingso this is a very good way to basically you know maximize the use of your space by growingon thing in the center and other things around, looks like they’ve got around six beetsaround the outside ring and one collard green in the middle. i guess over in this next containerhere they got a tree collard, with two swiss chard plants growing and each one has a littlebit different things happening in it. next what we’re gonna do is show you someof the varieties of things that are growing here in these containers very successfully.these containers this is part of their summer garden still and some of these guys righthere these are pepper plants and they’ve
got these cool trellis system here, just avery simple plastic trellis system. this guy looks like its got some really nice, largecalifornia peppers on there, bell peppers, maybe some california wonders something likethat. and this container or 15 gallon pot has one plant in it. the one behind actuallyhas two plants in it. it looks like those are actually doing quite well. you might evenbe able to fit three pepper plants in here, if you space them right i think that’d probablywork pretty well. and this one just has a single pepper plant here. now its very importantwhen growing in a very small confined, tight space, to put a trellis on right when youput the plant, the plant start because if you put it on later it might be a pain inthe butt, it might not even work that well
and you might even end up breaking the plants.so they’ve used some trellises very well here. it looks like it’s about the rightheight that it needs to be, so that’s really cool and then another thing that they’reusing is, they’re using some mulch. so they’ve got different wood chips on top for the mulch,also tree bark and leaves. in this container they probably had some other thing from asummer crop, probably tomatoes for example and they’re starting to plant the fall slashwinter garden they’ve got some brussels sprouts in this one. so if you’ve got ahankering for some brussels sprouts, plant some! they’re already starting to plan outfor the fall and winter which is definitely a wise thing to do now while hasn’t gottentoo cold yet. if you wait too long to plant
your fall slash winter garden its gonna gettoo cold and things aren’t quite gonna grow as fast. you really wanna get that wintergarden in now especially if you live in northern california and you know things will have abouta month to grow really well and get to a nice large point where its photosynthesizing alot cause its got a lot of leaves before it starts to get really cold and not as muchsun. so yeah establish your winter garden now like they’re doing here. this is somebrussels sprouts, you might be thinking “hey john, that doesn’t look like the brusselssprouts†because the brussels sprouts you know and i know look like little small cabbagesright in the store but when a plants young it just has some leaves like collard greensand guess what, even though this is brussels
sprouts that doesn’t have the sprouts onit you can still eat the leaves and they’re brussels sprouts greens. i like to juice themor actually blend them up. over in this area what they’ve got are actuallysome of my favorite crops in the whole wide world and that’s this guy right here toweringup above everything else. these guys are probably about three or four feet tall, and these arethe tree collard, these are the perennial tree collards, they’ll grow year round hereand they’re getting quite tall. at some point they may want to top them off that willactually encourage more side shoot. it looks like this plant does have a lot of good sideshoot coming out to produce more leaves. in addition you know making the most of yourspace is really important whether you’re
growing in a raised bed or even containers.so while many might just have one tree collard per 15-gallon pot, not only do they have atree collard in the middle, they also have celeriac or celery root along the bottom.they’ve got one, two, three, four, five plants along the bottom here, and this isbasically the celery root. and the celery root you can eat, that’s also called celeriac.but you could also use the celery just like celery and the celery that you’ll get, ifyou’ll notice on the video there its nice dark green leaves like if you go to buy celeryin the store its always almost like a yellowish color and i don’t know that’s up withthat cause celery should always be this dark and really rich in chlorophyll. i considercelery another really good leafy green you
can eat. now while i don’t like eating thecelery leaves, they have a funny flavor, i might juice them up, but i like to harvestthem, these celery stalks, i like to chop them up or just eat them straight off theplant. they taste so good like its just like how celery should be tasting. not like theflavorless stuff you buy from the grocery store. that’s just yet another reason togrow your own food. besides all the containers in this back yardthey also have a pre-existing raised bed that may or may not have been growing vegetablesbefore. so they literally filled it up with some good organic compost and made some amendmentslike the worm castings and they’ve grown a lot of stuff in here as well. looks likethey’re spacing things out really well here
with the square foot garden method. they’vegot some tat soy here about six plants and literally just this few square feet. theygrow really close and that’s another excellent winter vegetable they should be growing now.looks like they’ve also got things like broccoli and kale and collard greens and chardand herbs and even some lettuce down there too. and i like that there’s, there’sactually a humming bird down there getting some nectar from the borage plant and they’vegot some nasturtium crawling up along the trellis along the house. another reason they may be doing the containersand on the pallets to get them off the ground is because they have some dogs and as youcan see the dog is currently digging in the
ground there making quite a mess and if raisedbed, if the dog would jump in the raised bed and start digging up all your plants that’dbe no fun so definitely having them in some containers off the ground will definitelykeep your pets off and i know for you guys that have cats. like cats will use your raisedbeds literally as a litter box, you know if there’s nothing growing in there. some waysaround that are basically grow things in there and grow them densely so they won’t go inthere, or you could use the welded wire fencing over the top cause then they won’t you knowclimb on that or you could a fence around the perimeter as well. next we’re gonna take a look at some morecrops they have growing in their containers
in the back yard. over here they’ve gotsome parsley. now parsley most people consider it an herb, i consider it a leafy green vegetableand actually i’d come and harvest a bunch of this parsley and just chop it fine andmix it in with some guacamole maybe some garlic and sprouted buckwheat and actually call thata salad. in addition they’ve got some purple cauliflower here i always encourage you togrow your foods of color besides cauliflower being white i’ve also seen green, purpleand even like cheese colored or cheddar cheese colored cauliflower so uh they all taste aboutthe same but they’re definitely cool to look at. i love visiting viewer’s houses, especiallywhen i find new plants that i was not aware
about and can share them with you guys andactually here’s one of them. i don’t know if you can see it on the camera there thisis dinosaur kale you may have known about dinosaur kale also known as lactosino kaleor snakeskin kale. its probably one of the most nutrient dense kales out there causeits just so dark leafy green. it has so much chlorophyll in it. but if you’re thinkingthis doesn’t look exactly like dinosaur kale you’d be right, it looks a lot shinierlike they’re literally spraying something on it to make it maybe bug and insect repellantbut they’re not actually. this dinosaur kale is a special variety called shiny diny.and the shiny diny dinosaur kale is actually shiny and actually a darker leaf than thestandard dinosaur kale so this ones really
cool. i wanna definitely get some seed fromthis and actually start growing it out. i’d like to grow shiny diny and regular diny orregular dinosaur kale next to each other to show the comparison. plus you know it wouldlook kinda cool as a visual element as well and it’d trip people out and i like doingthat. another crop that they’re growing that i’venever seen before is this stuff right here its actually just called frizzy kale and thisstuff is actually quite frizzy. now this is definitely cool and a novelty but i tend tonot to like frizzy leafy greens because there tends to be bugs that will get stuck in allthe frizzies. luckily here they have a good program with some good soil and some goodnatural controls and it actually doesn’t
look like they have any bugs here. so in thissituation its not a problem but yeah frizzy kale definitely another good one you wannatry and you know every different kale whether it’s a frizzy kale or a dinosaur kale ora russian kale or a white siberian kale or a regular kale or a winter kale, they’reall a bit different they all taste a bit different all have a different spectrum of nutrientsand they all have different growing conditions. the red russian and the dinosaur kale aretwo kales that i grow in the summer and also grow in the winter some of the other varietiesi find tend to bulk very fast especially in the summer time when it gets some heat sothose are definitely good to grow in the winter. and this one it looks like they’re juststarting them for the winter season here and
so far so good. i’m always looking to glean and i don’tmean glean in food in viewers gardens when i go, but i’m looking to glean informationand things that could help me and also you guys out there in youtube land. and here’sa very valuable thing you can do that’s super simple and super easy, and i’ve learnedfrom visiting the viewer’s garden today. and what they’re doing is they’re usingthe standard blue tape, or this is blue painters tape and this is the easy release tape soit doesn’t leave marks on your container. and they put some tape on here and this onejust simply says ‘worms’ and this one says ‘nightshade 2012’. this is a verygood way you can mark your black containers,
cause its hard to you know write on your blackcontainers. basically they put some tape on, they use an indelible marker to put ‘worms’and why worms? well that means they took compost they made on sight with worms, and then tookthe finished compost that had some baby worms and small worms and put it in the containerso they know when they’re digging through this, there maybe worms in this if they survivedand proliferate and they know that when they dig through here. and they’d be more carefulabout that. in addition you could also use these tags to label your soil mixture. sayin this one we’d used sonoma compost, vermiculite, perlite and coconut core and then in anotherone you could put the mixture that you’d used and every basically container you mayhave a little bit different mixture and you’ll
notice that certain containers do better thanothers. maybe this one has the azomite and that one doesn’t cause you’re trying allthese things that i’m teaching you guys out to see if it really works for yourselfor not. now a lot of the things that i mention on my show, i mention for a reason cause youknow they do work and i’ve used them personally in my garden and i encourage you guys to usethem as well. another thing they’re doing is you could actually label these with whatyou had in it. so you could put brussels sprouts in here now so you’re growing brassicasin here, they put nightshade 2012 which means they grew a nightshade plant in here causemaybe in 2013 they don’t wanna put nightshades in here cause they’re maybe you know diseasesin the soil from the previous year and so
you could do basically rotation and crop rotationby labeling it so you remember what was in there the year before so that’s definitelya couple of valuable tips we can glean from this garden. one of the questions i got when i was herewas “john, how come my sugar snap peas aren’t doing so well?†and you know i took onelook a the plants and there’s some you know white powdery mildew on there and the plantsdon’t look super vibrant and super healthy and you know basically my answer was wellin generally i don’t generally plant the sugar snap peas like late in the summer timeor i when its really hot outside cause they don’t necessarily like the heat too much.what i normally do is i plant them in the
fall or maybe starting in about a month orso or even now maybe and get them established so that they’ll basically grow through andvery slowly into winter if you’re not having any freezes or major freezes. and then comelike february or march they’ll really start to take off in your garden and don’t forgetto put your trellis up now but once again that’s what i do and i always encouragemy viewers to try different things at different times of the year and see what works for youand make note of it. maybe even make a video about it to share with others in this wayyou’ll become better as a gardener in what works in your specific situation and one againin many situations. i’m just sharing with you guys what works for me in my situation.
so i’ve saved the best for last and actuallythe best is in this pot right here. this is a 15 gallon pot and there’s a little planttag and it says ‘j.kohler tree collard’ so i never knew that i had tree collards namedafter me and so what’s that they’re growing right here and when they got these tree collardsthey weren’t actually looking super healthy but they’ve been totally revived and youcan see the growth here on the tree collards nice thin stem but then it just started spurtingout and now the stem gotten a lot thicker and this is actually some of the tree collardstarts that were picked up at the heirloom expo just a few months ago and man this hasmuch more substantial growth then the ones that i brought home that i didn’t sell andthat’s cause they’ve put this in a larger
pot and fed it and watered it very well sothat’s definitely really cool. in addition, they’ve got some ‘j. kohler red sorrel’so some red veined sorrel or blood dock another plant that i iove to grow, a perennial andboth these guys are perennials and you know a lot of the crops that are growing here areannuals. but i definitely think that a move to growing more perennial crops is a smartthing to do because that’s like the lazy man’s garden. the plants you can plant justonce, they continue to produce year after year like the tree collards or on the redveined sorrel that’ll actually go to seed, drop seed and then you’ll have them comeup as weeds everywhere. so that’s definitely really smart and another technique that iencourage you guys to use in your garden,
so pretty much the day is at the end and i’veshowed you most the things they’re doing here in this back yard hopefully this hasgiven you some ideas on what you can do in your backyard and especially if you have commitmentphobias like many of us do. get some containers, sheet mulch, raise them up on pallets, putdrip irrigation system in, you can move them you can take them down you can build a raisedbed later if you desire or anything you want it really is that easy to grow some food andthey’re doing it here and you know how to do it too. once again my name is john kohlerwith growingyourgreens.com we’ll see you next time and remember keep on growing!