Good evening, everyone. Welcome back to Epic Homesteading.
I have a little surprise for you in today's vlog. Ooh, what IS that?
The new shirts are finally here.
Not NEW shirts.
I mean this is the first shirt we've ever had here at Epic Gardening.
The "keep on growing"shirt.
We also have the "plant daddy" shirt on organic cotton made in a sustainable
way. So the link will be up pretty soon for that. Not up yet.
Stay tuned on the shop. I wanted to show you today just a couple tweaks,
some adjustments,
some things that really have no place to go except for in a vlog like this.
Because there are these little minor things that just improve the efficiency of
the Homestead, the performance of some of the plants, some tiny little things.
So I want to show you first what we're doing at the shed. So look at.
This. What have I done here? And I know what you're going to say.
You're going to say, hey Kev, isn't that going to rust? Well no,
Corona tools are completely stainless steel and/or coated.
They're not going to rust. So these little clips here,
these are from a company called Wall Control. Again it's steel,
it's made in the USA and pretty affordably priced I have to say.
They sent them out so a huge thank you to them.
But I've got all my forks and hoes over there.
I've got my shovels and my apron right here.
On this backside I have some less commonly used tools like a mallet and a fruit
picker. And then these bow rakes right here.
But inside the shed it's all about efficiency here.
Let's take a look inside. Voila!
We've got all the garden tools hanging out right up here. I mean,
is that not beautiful or what? And then the new garden manager and I, Jacques,
we just sort of organized all of this.
There's some really fun goodies in here that I think will be showing up pretty
soon on the vlog. For example,
these Growoyas - a great way to irrigate in a low cost way.
Actually an ancient technique that's just been a little bit.
Updated here. But I want to show you out here. First of all, what.
You'll notice is there's actually a lot of green in the yard. Look at all that.
Let me just run over and show it to you. It's all grassy growth.
It's all not ideal. But you know.
The rains are comin'. Spring is here. We've got a bunch of nonsense in the yard.
Bunch of mulch.
Here. A couple of things we've done. Number one,
every now and then we clear out the potato patch.
So scuffle hoe straight through here, pull some grass out of these right here.
Almost every single one of these potatoes, red Pontiac,
we've got Russian banana, French fingerling, chieftain, russet Burbank,
and tara rose. Almost every single one is coming up.
You can see the tara rose is finally starting to come up.
We're only just waiting on the russet Burbank, which is chitting, I know it is.
I just, it's not coming up yet.
Now another thing we've done here is this is the garlic bed. Now,
it's the future of the garlic bed.
Cause what we ended up doing was we broadforked it. We poured water in,
we added a little mushroom compost.
We've now put cardboard down with some papers.
And the reason we've done that is to force germination.
Now one thing I just forgot to mention is we scraped off the top one inch of the
soil. The reason why is because there was a decent weed bed in there.
So you put that over there, boom, this pile right here.
And THEN you do that process I just mentioned - broadfork it, water it in,
add some compost, add the cardboard,
add the pressure to protect from the wind and also force germination a little
bit. So then what we'll do is we'll force the weeds to grow again.
Any other weed seeds that are left in there, they'll start growing.
We can come through with a flame weeder or a hoe, pull those out.
And then finally we can add a little bit more organic matter in and plant the
hardneck and softneck garlic right here. So a lot of prep on this garlic bed,
but garlic is a long season crop. You really have to get it right.
And so that's what we've done. We put a little marker here, right there,
just to see how quick the weeds grow week over week. Over here.
A lot of the soil in these beds has finally been fixed up.
There was a calcium deficiency, but what is this beautiful thing?
This is a native bee box up top here.
So native bees really prefer to nest in these thin holes. They're solitary bees,
most of them at least.
And so we're going to see if we get some colonization there,
but I'll probably do some spring peas up this.
This is from a company called Terra Trellis.
They're actually the makers of our moon arbor right there as well. So,
link will be in description for them.
We've moved the compost bin back here because this wasteland is eventually going
to have one, two, three,
four different bays like a Charles Dowding style composting system.
So we had to get that back there. Next up.
I'm going to take you out to the front. Again, these really small changes,
you know, with the prep of the beds,
the organization of the Homestead and even just slightly moving containers can
make a massive difference in the performance of your garden.
So let me show you what we've done here with the dragon fruit,
because I want to get a fruit this year if possible,
at least on some of the varieties.
And I don't think I was going to based on how I was planting them before. So.
Take a look. If you remember,
you can even see a little bit of the depressions there.
The dragon fruit were hugging right under this moon arbor straight down this
line here. Now that's east and right about there,
as the sun sets today, is west. And so if you think about it,
as the sun comes over, especially in the winter,
it'll cast a shadow till about 12 o'clock to somewhere around
about there.
So I would say three of these were in shadow until about 2:00 PM.
That's not good for dragon fruit. So we've kicked all these out here.
Probably still need to align them a little bit right next to this loquat tree.
So they're kind of hugging that edge here.
So I basically gave them three extra hours of sun just by moving them four feet
this way.
And what'll end up happening pretty soon as we,
as we build some actual fences here on the property and do away with some of
this chain link.
Is we're going to put in permeable pavers from here to about there and I'll go
straight back like this. So you'll have a big gate right here.
You can get a tool through, you can get a skid steer through,
anything that you're actually doing some serious work in.
And then you'll come around again, pavers right here, look at all this.
I mean pavers up to here. Boom.
And then right there is where the coop will end up.
So out here in the front yard garden,
here on the Homestead channel I kind like giving you little teasers of what's to
come on the main channel.
And so I've been working with the Subpod for quite some time now,
really just testing it out. And for those of you that don't know,
it's a subterranean or buried below the surface of the soil worm composting bin.
And so what we have is got a bunch of red wigglers in there.
I don't know if you can see them. Let's see if we can get a couple. Yeah.
You see them kind of moving around there.
What's nice about a subterranean style is you actually get a buffer
on cold or hot temperatures because most of it's down below.
So we've been doing some digging in this bed here.
You can see I've put some spring peas in.
We have sort of amended the soil and there's way more worms in this bed than
there are in these beds. But they're red wiggler worms,
which aren't really the worm you would typically want. Nevertheless,
I'm still going to take some worms over no worms at all.
I want to show you a couple of different things finally that we're doing out
here in the front yard.
So all these beds here have been stripped of their harvest.
We've done a little harvest and I've got some rat's tail radish in right here.
This is going to be a really exciting radish.
It's one that you are going to plant just quite a bit farther apart.
So it's about maybe 24 inches apart.
Because you're mostly growing them for the above ground and they grow quite
large and you're gonna harvest and eat the pods.
This one over here is my lettuce bed. I've got six lettuce starts in.
What do we have here? We've got great lakes lettuce,
the rest I'm going to patchwork fill in.
And it's actually okay that they're not perfectly in all at the same time cause
that'll be a staggered planting, which is great.
We've got sunflower and cosmos over here and then take a look at this.
So I'm going to do a video pretty soon on the GreenStalk gardens.
So this is sort of the OG design, the original one with one, two, three, four,
five levels. So 30 different growing sites.
And then this is the new GreenStalk leaf. And this is one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven levels. So you obviously get 42 growing sites.
But take a look at the actual height of them. They're the same exact height.
And honestly, if you're growing shallow-rooted stuff,
like you're growing a root crop perhaps, or you're growing some flowers,
or you're growing some lettuce,
this one's going to get you more production in the same vertical footprint that
the original one is. So I really like that.
And the original GreenStalk has been planted out with a ton of different cool
flowers and honestly, grains. I put some amaranth in this one,
so we'll see how it goes.
They might get a little crowded but I'll just show you a couple.
Lemongrass is up top.
It's taken a little while to come in but eventually it will.
And then we've got all sorts of little randoms right here. Boom, you got that.
This little guy, I believe that's call Gomphrena.
We've got Nigella here and just a bunch of other stuff.
In this one I'm going to do calendulas, I'm going to do other smaller flowers.
Oh look, I finally got him on video.
This is one of the cats that visits my yard.
I'm actually somewhat convinced he's a ghost because he just does that.
That's just all he does. Sorry about the zoom, I'm on my phone.
But look at that. I mean, is that not a ghost? What should we name him guys?
I think he's, he's a neighbor's cat I think,
but I don't really know 100%. But man, look at this guy!
He's just hanging there. He'll come through.
And he'll actually go for like field mice and stuff.
Let's see what happens if I slowly approach.
Will he just vanish? Yeah. He's going to vanish into thin air.
Look at that jump. Impressive!
All right, my friend, I'll see you another time.
Man, I know it's a little messy guys,
but I am just SO pleased with the progress here at the Homestead.
Look at the shed. Look at the little workout zone. We've got the solar up there.
Can you imagine what this is going to look like?
And here's something I want to say.
In the front yard garden I'm really being honestly kind of particular and very
detail oriented with how I've set it up.
But here in the back garden as I'm calling it,
I'm just going to decide things I want to try growing inground and almost do it
like a patchwork quilt. So the potatoes are here. I said, oh,
I want to do garlic. So I'll just put a little patch of garlic there.
I'm actually thinking I'm going to do a patch of onions right there.
And then with some of these chips I'm probably going to inoculate with wine cap
mushroom spawn, clear out this spot right here,
about five by five plot over there,
and try to grow some mushrooms right over there.
And this is all part of the Homesteading, Epic Homesteading mission.
Really the mission of Epic Gardening - teach a hundred million people around the
world how to grow their own food and plants and live sustainably.
Many different methods will work. You can do raised beds in the front yard.
You can do containers. You can do a tiny little balcony, garden,
hydroponic garden as I have in the front yard as well.
Or you can go wild and just do sort of an au naturel garden,
very unplanned but organic looking and fun and just experimental.
So I'm really pleased.
I just wanted to come on and share with you some quick updates.
Some things that I've been thinking about doing and also.
Come on now. You know I had to show off the "keep on growing".
Epic Gardening shirt. Sorry, it's like I'm being Superman right now.
Trying to like show off my pecs for you guys. But I'll show you,
I'll put a little screenshot up. You can see it.
That should be out and up on the store by the time this video comes out.
I'm really hoping that you guys like the design.
100% of the net proceeds from any of the merch I ever
sell on Epic Gardening is actually going to go towards what I'm calling the Epic
Gardening Grant Program.
And so what I want to do is I've been very fortunate to grow Epic Gardening to
the level that it is now.
I don't need the money from the merch to go towards my personal pocketbook.
And I'd much rather route that money, that revenue stream of Epic Gardening,
I'd much rather route it into a bank account that we save up and we fund
worthwhile gardening projects. Whether that's sending seeds to the inner city,
whether that is, you know,
setting up a school garden somewhere here in San Diego,
sponsoring a garden somewhere else in the world,
maybe even a third world country, second world country. We'll see.
But I just wanted to say that like these merch designs,
I'm not trying to just scoop up extra cash from everyone.
I'm trying to offer something, what I think is valuable,
connect with the Epic Gardening community.
It's actually a really sick and cool looking shirt. It feels amazing!
It's an organic cotton made in a really, really sustainable nice way.
But I don't want that money to just like keep filling up the bank account.
What I'd rather do is route it towards worthwhile causes.
So that's the little story on that. I would request that anyone who orders one,
only order one so other people get a chance to order them.
But until next time guys, good luck in the garden. Keep on growing.
I got to go hit a workout and I'll see you guys soon.