It's nice to sit around here on the property with just a nice coastal breeze,
not a lot of people around.
This is part of why I like having this much space,
kind of away from the city this time,
or at least a little bit more away from the city.
So the show - it's almost wrapped, the TV show.
I can't wait to tell you all more about that. The second book,
Growbag Gardening - again, almost finished.
So now it's time to turn my attention towards this property in a more holistic
way. Like how am I actually going to structure everything?
And that's what I want to show you in today's vlog.
This is Epic Urban Homestead Episode 5.
Update number one is that the compost bin is full and clearly too
small for the property.
I just think that this example of a bin is great for the average backyard
gardener. So I wanted to give just a quick overview of how it was built.
It's almost exclusively cedar two by six. So, two by six here, here,
here, here.
The only two by fours that exist are the ones that are holding in these slats.
So it's basically just building a cube out of two by six's,
leaving about an inch and a half gap for airflow.
Which you could put chicken wire around those edges there if you want it to
either protect from rodents or just protect from material falling out.
The only special part about this is the slatting.
And the reason why I like it is because I can come in and turn the pile easily,
I can dump it out easily, I can pull stuff out, put stuff in.
And speaking of.
There was a massive delivery of mulch that I happened across that I want to show
you next. Look what we got everyone. Some mulch,
actually I rerouted a tree service. Just said, hey,
can you dump it here instead? So I've been doing barrels.
We got to get them over to here is the goal, kind of near the new compost zone.
So that's my afternoon task. I'll see you in a bit.
We've gotten kind of close to the center of the pile here, check this out.
If I pull this out,
it's hard to see but that's really hot in there.
So it has already started to compost down. The job is complete. Check it out.
We've got a massive pile of mulch actually in the yard now.
Topped off the compost bin, bought myself a couple of new tools.
I want to show you those because they made the job a whole lot easier.
First of all, a push broom. That's not that revolutionary I know,
but I didn't have one. So made quick work of sweeping up the scraps. But second,
da-da-ta-da, five tine fork. It's probably three times faster than a shovel,
I would say, when you're dealing with large quantities.
Then it makes sense to be three times faster. In fact,
it probably makes sense to be three times faster, no matter what,
but highly recommend. It's maybe like 30, 40 bucks.
I was fortunate to find those guys trimming trees just right across the street,
but I've talked about it before.
You can get wood chips from a service called ChipDrop.
You just have to be prepared to get at least this many wood chips,
if not much more. And you don't know when they're coming.
So a great way to do it is to either do what I did.
Call an arborist and just say, hey, can I have these, do you mind?
Call me when you're in the area next, something like that.
You can also grab it usually from your local municipality. But for me,
I think I'm going to try to foster some local relationships with some service
providers. And you know, when they're chopping down some trees, hey,
give me a text, dump it.
I'll grab out the wheelbarrow and the pitchfork and get to work.
Out here in the front yard things are going really,
really well in these improved inground beds.
I've got some Bermuda grass to deal with,
which I might even make an entirely different video on because it is gnarly and
I'm looking at it right now and having anxiety. So the tomatoes are doing well.
I need to build a support for these because they are actually starting to throw
out some serious fruit. And these are some heavy fruiters. Jalapenos, onions,
the salsa bed is doing really well.
Call your attention up here to the Thai garden.
On the main channel I threw out a little video on how to improve a bed.
So check that out. But my friend Supannee came and we did lemongrass,Thai basil,
all sorts of amazing stuff.
But these are the two you probably know about.
I want to show you two beds that I put in that you don't know about yet.
I threw together a quick and dirty extra bed right here.
I'm putting corn in. And the reason why is I actually have time.
Here it's late July. We have a summer. We basically have two seasons.
We have a warm and a cool season.
We're still in the warm season for at least a few more months.
This is an early Japanese black sticky corn that I'm hoping to harvest and turn
into some sort of dessert for the main channel.
What I want to do is more A to Z grow guides. It takes time.
It takes a lot more effort, but I think it's going to be worth it.
So I'm just gambling. Seeing if I can squeeze out a crop.
I threw some Dragon tongue beans up here as well. What I'm noticing though,
for those of you who are making an inground bed,
is when you're rototilling and improving a bed like this,
just make sure you're not chopping up a weed that propagates via rhizome.
Because as soon as you do that, you've now taken,
let's say a five foot long piece of,
of rhizomatic weed and you chop it up into, let's say 10 different pieces.
Voila. You now just 10x'd the amount of weed problem you have.
So I've noticed I accidentally did do that.
And I've got a little bit of a Bermuda grass right here, you can see,
even coming out. And it's going to be a big problem.
So this is probably going to be a temporary bed.
I'll scrape off the good organic matter and move it into a different bed in the
future.
But we'll see if we can get some corn and beans out of this bed in a couple
months. A flower bed has also made it into the front yard.
Actually some color, obviously green is a color and my favorite color,
but some extra color with these marigolds, some salvias,
a bunch of cool stuff in here.
It's just annual flowers to brighten up the space. Again,
all of this stuff in the future is very likely to swap over to
tall raised beds.
And I'm going to do a lot of row gardening or inground gardening in the back
where I have a different type of weed pressure,
which I think is easier to manage than this Bermuda grass.
But nice little bed here, pretty happy about it. Now,
as far as planning goes I had a really cool opportunity as an Epic Gardening
follower reached out, who is a landscape designer architect.
She's got a bunch of creds to her name and she said, hey,
I want to do a to-scale map of the property.
And so I want to tackle these fences to kind of solidify the property line.
I have seven fences on the property.
I'd like to get to maybe like three different types of fences.
That seems pretty reasonable to me. So this one goes over through the garage.
That one over there I also have to deal with.
So what I want to do now is show you the to-scale property map and just kind
of explain the philosophy of how I'm planning. Because for me, obviously,
Epic Urban Homestead is actually a business, but even if it wasn't,
I would be thinking of the property through the lens of business.
Where should I make improvements?
What improvements are likely to retain value or build value?
Where should I spend my money first?
How much money should I spend on each different thing?
So that's kind of the thing that I like to think about and this phase,
because if I don't do it now, I'm going to make a mistake.
And that mistake is going to compound to be pretty expensive in the future.
So let's take a look on the computer at the map overhead.
So here it is. We have a very,
very cool architectural layout of the lot. So what you can see right away is,
here's the home right about there-ish or so.
Here's the garage. And then the rest of this is the lot,
which is absolutely massive. Now a lot of you have asked,
how do you go about the planning phase? Well,
I'm new to it just like many of you are or will be or maybe were in a past the
time when you've already done this. But here's how I'm thinking about it.
First of all,
it's great to have a to-scale map because now I know if I was to draw
a, I don't know, a three by four foot raised bed right there, right here,
right here,
I actually know that that's three by four feet and it will appear exactly as it
is. It's to scale, right? So that helps. But number two,
I can start thinking about the strategic improvements to the property.
In what order do I do them and how much am I willing to invest, right?
So first of all, property lines. So take a look at this one back here.
This is where the current shed is. It's right about there.
Now I have this chain link fence with those slatted privacies,
those like little slat things.
They're plastic slats that kind of block the chain link.
That's what's right here.
The property line goes in to match my garage and comes back out.
But if you look at the original map, this is not there.
So I'm 95% sure that I actually own this little slice that's on the other
side. So what I want to do, well let's tell you about this fence first.
This fence is a very large double-sided wooden fence that's high quality.
I'd like to keep it. So probably the only fence I really like. Now,
what I want to do is replace the chain link so it's a better looking and more
sturdy fence and connect it here, right?
And so that's probably a decent little fence job.
It's maybe like 75 feet or so. So I'd like to,
I'd like to shore that up.
I'd like to get that looking nice because if I'm going to relocate the shed,
the shed is here, if I'm going to tear it down and build a better bigger shed,
I want to build it in front of a fence that's already done.
I don't want to have to like go behind it to then replace the fence.
So the fence and the property line reclamation seem like the first play here.
Then I can put the shed in somewhere around, right there I'm thinking,
and it can be five feet away from that fence line.
Great to have the fence line before you place it though.
Now on this side over here, let's just recap.
I've got that slatted wooden fence going along this line, as well as this line.
And then over here, I have a chain link fence. And then from here to here,
I also have a chain link fence. Now what's going on here? Well,
here I have an inset white vinyl fence.
It doesn't make a lot of sense because both of these sides run past it. Now,
if you look at the lot line and the original property lines,
it seems that I own what's on the other side of that fence.
And so what I'd like to do again is make it nice and clean. Less fences,
a more consistent style, up-to-date built, really good construction.
And so this is going to be a pretty decent project to get - first of all,
to negotiate that line. But second of all, to get a line,
a fence line across effectively the longest side of the entire
property. I think it's necessary.
I'd like that privacy over here as in uncovered chain links,
you can look straight through into the neighbor's yard.
Nothing against neighbors at all, but I just like that privacy.
It's going to be nice to have that.
So those are two things that I'm thinking about. And then as we go down here,
you can see the actual structure of the home home. And what you've got is,
you've got the ability to look at how the water lies.
So you've got boom, here's the roof.
Water's running from left to right cause it's a slightly sloped flat roof.
So it's coming from this whole direction all the way out here.
It's going off this back porch awning thing.
And so I've got a gutter that I need to fix and replace right there.
I should probably wrap it to there and I should probably have it come here too
cause this is the only other surface that it rolls off of - is right here.
And so that means that my water reclamation, my rainwater capture,
has to be somewhere in this area.
It kind of has to be because otherwise I'm porting water too far.
So it's another thought that I have. Now,
the other cool thing about this is let's say I have snapped my fingers magically
and all that stuff is done, which might take a little bit of time,
but let's say I've done that. Well, then I can play around.
What I'm going to do is print this out and I can play around with different
layouts of the property and say, oh, what if I did, you know,
the chicken coop right here? What if I did row crops, you know,
right here for the season. I can do that.
And that's what's really nice about this.
So I'm probably gonna get this printed out on a laminate.
And so I can draw different plans to scale and just test things out.
I hope the overall look at the property helps you understand how I'm thinking
about it. And of course, if you have suggestions and ideas drop them down below.
I've been really loving the amount of community participation here on the
channel. People have been dropping comments about the well,
about rainwater capture, about all sorts of stuff.
And the other thing I'll say is,
I think that it's important when you're doing a property like this,
it's an urban environment, right?
It's not like a rural home and it's probably not the home I will live in for the
rest of my life. So I need to think about it in an intelligent manner.
I can't be throwing tons and tons of money into this property,
building the investment I've put into it well above the other properties around
me, because then I've overbuilt for the area or overimproved for the area.
So I need to figure out the most intelligent use of my capital into this
property to get the results I want from the garden, from the homestead,
that whole thing. But also,
so I'm not sinking money into an asset that's not going to give me
that return back if and when I ever do sell. Maybe I'll never sell. Who knows,
right? We never know.
But I wanted to show you this little update on the pallet garden planter before
we headed out. Beautiful, beautiful results here!
I mean just look at this basil, the oregano,
I mean everything is just looking amazing.
The only thing I'll say about a pallet planter is you need to make sure to deep
water it cause as you get lower, the plants have less vigor.
The reason why is because the water just sometimes doesn't get all the way down
there. So you have to make sure you do that. But otherwise it's fantastic.
Until next time, thanks for joining me on the vlog.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.