Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have something that's really essential for use around the garden here and hopefully
maybe in your garden or hopefully soon to be in your garden.
These are just basic five gallon, actually I think this one's a seven gallon bucket.
So these are being re-used, I actually got these for free at a local health food store
that gets shipments in bulk and then they sell these items in bulk, so I don't know
this one may have had some kind of nut butter or something like that or olives or different
pickles, different things.
So if you want to find these check with maybe a local grocery store, deli.
If you really need a bucket they sell them at Home Depot and Lowes.
I don't recommend buying them, I recommend trying to find them for free.
Restaurants also.
Often times they just throw them out and these go to waste and these are so useful.
So let me show you today some of the ways that we use our reused buckets.
So it's always better to reuse than recycle.
So we're reusing.
So the first thing is as I'm sitting in the bok choy bed I could be leafing.
So I got all these leaves now and I got to do something with them and instead of just
dumping them on the ground I'll put them in the bucket and then I'll take it over to the
compost pile or compost bin and dump them all in there.
So really handy for doing leafing, nice size, holds a lot.
Alright some buckets come in all shapes and sizes, this actually happens to be a square
bucket, it's kind of cool.
Let's see what we have inside here.
Oop, there's dog food in this bucket.
So buckets are also, wooo, good for storing cry goods.
So whether you have dogs and store your dog, dry dog food or even storing like your fertilizers,
your dry fertilizers and other things like that.
But the lid on the bucket and it'll keep it water tight.
So here's another good use for buckets.
This happens to be a smaller bucket, maybe a three gallon size.
What it's good for, hauling around materials.
So from compost, if we're moving compost from the pile, to like a raised bed or actually
we have all our rock dust in here so we could easily take this out to the front bed and
shake it around to distribute the rock dust.
To moving stones and rocks, really nice.
Buckets come in really handy.
They're nice and stable and they could actually hold a lot of weight.
So here's another use of buckets.
So we got this cutting, or actually we didn't take this cutting, the wind blew it down because
we didn't tie it up and stake it well enough.
It wasn't tied up so it actually fell down in the wind.
We could basically, you could put some water in the bucket and put the plant in there.
It's not going to live in there for a long time, but it'll keep it alive, much like cut
flowers, like that.
Actually if you have a willow tree, and I used to have a willow tree here, you can actually
take willow branches and put them in the water with the branches and the cuttings from the
end of the branches, put it in the water and actually make your own rooting hormone.
Because willow has, willow tips and leaves have a rooting compound naturally occurring
in there, mix it in with the water and then you could make your own rooting compound in
your five gallon bucket.
Alright, another excellent use of buckets and we do this all the time, is for mixing.
So we make our own planting mix here.
We use basically a half perlite and half peat moss and then we add some compost in there
too.
Some good finish compost to make our own planting mix and we'll mix that either in a bucket
if we're making a small amount.
Then actually once it's mixed in a bucket we can put a lid on it and then save it so
next we need it it's there.
Or sometimes we use a wheelbarrow if we're making a lot larger quantities as well.
Even mixing, if you have a little bit of concrete to mix up, you could mix it up in a bucket.
Just make sure you clean it really well after you're done.
So today I have a unique problem, I want to harvest some of my tree kale that's on the
top.
I don't want these bottom leaves, but they really all taste good.
So I really want these top leaves, how am I going to get up there?
Well hey, I have this five gallon bucket.
Wait wait, I can't stand on this side that won't make me any taller!
I know, I can turn it over!
These things probably hold at least a hundred fifty pounds, maybe two hundred, maybe more!
Wow look at this I could harvest my tree kale now because I'm much taller.
So yeah, you could always use a bucket as a step stool to make you taller so you could
harvest your fruit or leaves that's really high up.
Alright another great use for buckets is if you have them near your shed or in your garage
you can actually put the tools you need, so I have a couple different tools in here.
You can take it out to work on your projects.
So if I'm going out to the front yard and going to work on some of the beds, I could
take this out to the front bed and then I don't have to have my tools all spread out.
I could just neatly put them back in here and then when I come back I'll take them back
to the shed and put them away.
So, easy to transport your tools, great use for buckets.
What do these two have in common?
We got this big thirty-five gallon drum that basically collects the rain water off of my
roof, comes down to this diverter and then it fills up right here.
I did do an episode on that, so if you're interested you could check that out and see
how we did it.
But what does this and this have in common?
They could both catch rainwater!
So even if you don't have a set up like this and probably for a bucket you don't even need
something as elaborate as this.
You could literally just put this bucket out in the middle of your yard and let it catch
rainwater and often times we don't this on purpose here, but we leave buckets out and
they just fill up with rainwater and then we use that rainwater to water our plants.
So you could catch rainwater with five gallon buckets.
Alright so we're in the green house here and another great use of buckets is use them as
pots.
Oh this things so heavy!
So if you drill some holes in the bottom here for drainage you could plant things in here.
So actually I thing we've got a carrot coming up in here and I don't know if we planted
that in there or not, and some, I think some collards that are going to seed there.
But yeah, use plants for buckets.
I'll do another episode on actually showing you planting plants in the buckets.
But generally you could do like one tomato plant per five gallon bucket.
One zucchini plant, you could probably do a couple cucumber plants, but make sure you
put a trellis on there.
A bunch of peas, let's see what else?
Basically you could plant most things in a bucket.
Alright another use of the buckets, that's if you have the lid actually attached.
You could premix your different fertilizers, make compost tea.
This one's actually storing our soy seal.
So this is treatment, the natural treatment we put on the wood that's non-toxic.
Actually it came in here and then after we're done using this as the liquid we're going
to reuse this bucket.
Yet another bucket and another use!
So this bucket was actually sitting on the side over there and it just was holding all
these things.
So we got some, basically sprayers, waterers, stakes and my older sprinklers that we took
out of the front yard when I use to have a lawn.
But it's good for categorizing and putting things in order and then when you need to
transport them, makes it really easy to do that too.
So here's a lesson we learned firsthand at Growing Your Greens.
When storing your buckets make sure they're completely clean and with no soil or mud or
anything in there.
They're also dry.
They're going to store them together.
Then, don't stand on this and push them together harder.
Because they will get stuck.
Alright, I just thought of another good use for buckets.
This is the bucket in my house actually that stays in my kitchen next to my recycling and
garbage can.
It's another bucket, with a lid on it!
So let's check out what's in there.
Ah it's a bucket full of food scraps and compost.
It's going to go outside in the compost pile.
Another excellent use of buckets.
Everybody should have a five gallon bucket for their food scraps to take out for their
compost pile.
But make sure you put the lid on because if you don't, it's going to smell kind of funky
and I usually wash it out every week.
Alright, great use of buckets.
So one of the things I want to talk about too is when you get the buckets, when you
obtain the buckets, hopefully they've only contained food-grade materials.
So buckets may have had industrial oils and all kinds of nasty stuff that we don't want
to be bringing into our garden.
So if you get those kinds of ones, maybe only use those one for the non-gardening type things
like toting your tools around and things like that.
Make sure they're clean.
So I hope you've learned more about using buckets in the garden today.
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
This is what happens if you don't store your bucket properly.
So check out this outtake.
Alright here at growing your greens we have lots of fun too!
Here's the gardeners working on getting some five gallon pots out.
Man: It's not going to happen, it's not going to happen.
John: Yeah it is!
Come on!
Woman: Jesus Christ, that's crazy.
Woman: Shit.
John: We got it!
It's coming, right?
Or no?
Am I just thinking it's coming?
Woman: That's what I tried last time and I mean Sage, literally I've been trying that
for weeks.
John: I mean this is like, how much do you think we could pull man?
Man: Not very much, apparently.
Woman: The hardest part of gardening.
Man: This is it, right here.
Personally I could actually hang on it.
Woman: Use your body weight.
John: Use the arbor man.
Man: Yes, yes.
John: Hey I want to hang on it, wait, who weighs more?
Man: I don't know, I'll hang on it and then if I'm not enough.
Woman: Then John can hang on to you.
John: Then I'll hang onto you.
Yeah there you go.
Man: No man, it's not coming.
John: Should I hang on you man?
Man: I don't this is going to work.
Woman: This is insane.
Man: I don't think my fingers could take it, oh wait.
Woman: Oh my god.
Man: Oh it's because it's muddy in there.
That should do it.
John: I wanted to hang on there man!
Man: Sorry John.
Woman: Then there were two.
Man: Then there were two, yes.
Just like a Russian egg doll.
John: Alright there you have it, we got the barrels unstuck.
It took three people, how many gardeners did it take to get barrels unstuck.
Three!