- Another noisy day here in winter.
Jacque just had to change out of his pants into shorts.
- Too hot, too hot in San Diego.
- It's too hot in winter, apparently.
- 60 degrees.
- Anyways, we've got a lot of things to do today,
there's a lot of things going on.
The epic pathway is actually being built as we speak.
But we need to move some beds,
we need to prep the chicken coop, and a whole lot more.
Before we head out in the front, take a look.
That radish method from last video is working really well.
Beets are coming up.
You can see a little peak of them right there.
And then the carrots, sad.
We're still waiting.
Carrots take a while to germinate though.
- Yeah, at least a week.
- [Kevin] Yeah. (beep)
Right now we're just digging out the pathway area.
This is our level line right there,
and here's kind of the way it's going to be arranged.
So a lot of progress,
Jacque's heading up to the strawberry beds,
we're going to do a little harvest.
So this is the bed that has to move
and the reason why is because
this is our right side of the path
and it's going to be about three foot 10 inches.
So it's actually going to come in on this bed.
We're rethinking the berry patch anyways.
I don't even think these are blueberries at this point,
I think something random was put in these
and sold as blueberries
and we have this weird Frankenstein's monster.
But what we need to do is
get these strawberries out of here,
we're going to harvest.
There's actually quite a few for late December.
See if you can hunt one down, Jacque.
- [Jacque] This a good one.
- [Kevin] Give it that taste test.
I know he does it when I'm not looking, anyways.
- It's true.
It's actually really good. - [Kevin] Yeah.
- Better than any store-bought.
Not as sweet, but still good.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
So what we're going to do is deconstruct the bed,
I think we want to move it
and we're going to pot out
all the strawberries that still exist in their own pots,
figure out where to put this bed,
but for now it just needs to get out of the way here.
(upbeat music)
- [Jacque] So I'm going to look at it.
Look for any runners by running my fingers.
longer and there's one.
So it probably started there
and I'll come in right underneath.
We'll take a look at the roots.
- [Kevin] Decent, healthy root system there.
- [Jacque] Yeah - [Kevin] That's nice.
- [Jacque] That's kind of transplant.
You could see there's some white roots that's still alive.
- Yep yep.
And then we were coming through
and just kind of cleaning up too.
You would take off little guys like that, et cetera.
And then right now, yeah, we're just tossing them over here.
We're going to end up transplanting them
into this grow bag for the winter
and we'll bring them back to the
future strawberry bed once we decide where that is.
So as I was splitting some of these crowns apart,
you can see, we have some little roly polies
or pill bugs in here
and that's what's been eating most of these plants.
And so what's interesting is
as these have sort of clumped up
and kind of gotten a little sloppy over the winter,
I think some of that decaying plant material
has attracted the pill bugs
and they've actually gotten themselves
entangled in these roots.
So something to think about when you're looking at
these sort of eaten away leaves here
that you don't really know what's causing it.
Sometimes they're hanging out right in that crown zone.
So it doesn't look the nicest,
but certainly these will all transplant in
and we probably have as many or more strawberries
than we actually started in this bed for the next season.
These are ever bearing strawberries.
So a creative way to clean up a strawberry patch
and sort of reset it for the next season.
Now we just have to get this bed out of here.
And a lot of people think that you have to
unscrew every panel of the birdies beds to do that.
But you actually don't,
I'm going to show you how easy it is to get a bed
up out of the ground and move it.
So Jacque can get on that side.
I'll grab this corner here three, two, one.
Pretty easy.
Now you have a bunch of soil you have to move,
but that's fine.
If you want it to move it just
a couple of feet that way to get out of the way
of an obstacle and refill it,
it would literally be about a 10 minute job.
Now we need to get this soil out of the way.
So here's a little cross section of the soil.
You can see the corrugation imprint there,
but take a look at what else you see,
you see these Bermuda grass markings.
We did not put as much cardboard as we wanted to
on the bottom there.
And Bermuda did eventually start to
creep its way all the way up.
So a very important point is to make sure
that you put a lot of cardboard down
before you plant on top of Bermuda.
And another little benefit here.
Look at this worm.
Dude this worm is honestly weird-looking.
Whoa, dude and it feels weird.
Oh, it's like nude.
It's like, it's got this like sheen,
this little sheen to it.
Is this an alien?
Is this a new species?
What is that?
It's so shiny.
What dude I can see a tongue.
Is this a snake?
Is this a little snake.
Dude honestly, is this a little snake?
Look, dude, it's a little snake.
- [Jacque] Oh, it is.
- [Kevin] It is a little snake, oh my God.
- [Jacque] Blind snake.
- [Kevin] We got a brahminy blind snake.
- [Jacque] I didn't even know that is a thing.
- Oh my God yes.
So I freaked out a little bit.
Kevin Thornberry, if you get that reference,
but what we actually found was a Brahminy blind snake,
and you can see him or her right here.
This is the only snake that is in existence on Hawaii
because it's been brought in nursery pots
because there were no snakes in Hawaii
before that moment in time.
You can see there's a little tongue and it is blind,
but it does have eyes.
The eyes are just like recessed in the skin.
So these guys like to eat ants.
They like to eat termites.
I'm going to eventually put them back into the soil,
probably somewhere over there.
And we're moving on because we just check the forecast
and we're getting what an inch of rain.
- Inch to two inches potentially.
- Almost two inches of rain.
This year that's probably a fourth of the rain we've gotten.
So we need to prep this land.
I'm going to show you exactly what we're going to do
to prepare the garden
and all the systems here at the homestead for the rain.
Step number one is to flush all of the first flush filters.
So this is the main one over here.
So I've opened it up.
And what that is,
is this is the area where the rainwater comes down
and just collect.
So the first bit of rainwater collects in this tube here.
So if you know, it's going to rain again,
you have to flush it out so it can recollect.
You'll get a better sense of it here on shed rainwater tank,
because this one has yet to be plugged into anything.
And so you can see, if I just flip this
tons of water just pours out,
which we have to drain out
so that we don't put a bunch of debris into the tank.
Final one is our tank out here in the front
that's collecting off the cobblestone,
that little tiny little section.
I do need to put some plugs here just to make sure
that I'm not putting a bunch of water
right next to my house, which is not ideal.
But for now it's fine.
Another thing you have to do
is make sure that you clear your leaf filters out.
So as the name implies,
just make sure that all of the debris
that comes out when you first wash rain over this,
it doesn't go into your tank,
but you can't leave it there either.
So you've got to clear it out so we can filter it off again.
Okay we've prepped for the rainwater collection,
but now what we have to prep for is
the flow of rainwater over this landscape.
You can see the pond.
We don't want a lot of sediment getting in that pond.
Jacque was here last time it rained, I wasn't here.
I was on a top secret mission.
Jacque was manning the fortress and what happened dude?
- Basically so much water came down
that it washed some of this dirt into the pond
and the reservoir.
- Yeah and it stayed murky for days after that,
- You can see it around the rocks too.
- Yeah and it's not the worst thing in the world,
you're going to get some dirt in the pond, not a big deal,
it'll filter through the underground system,
but you don't want to get it there if you don't have to.
So what we're going to try to do
is a creative solution to build a lot of berms and swales,
to kind of direct the water away from all that area.
I'm up here on top of the pond surveying the kingdom,
but this is a kingdom that we need to protect
because look, you've got this sort of caky soil here
that it's really just top soil that's been shifted.
So of course we need to plant this in.
But if you look at the slope, if waterfalls on the surface,
it's going to roll down the rocks
and it goes straight into the pond here.
Same with this area.
This area may overflow.
And that's to say nothing of this area over here
where these rocks are,
that's at a higher grade and then certainly the pond
and even this area here.
So what we noticed last time
is the water just came sort of rushing down.
So what Jacque had to do is get really creative
while it was raining.
Run out with this trenching shovel over here
and dig a little berm to kind of direct the water
away from the pond.
I would say he did a pretty good job on short notice.
But now that we have notice,
what we're going to do is take this little guy
and this trenching shovel over here
and see what we can do to kind of rough this area up,
create a bunch of zig-zaggy type of swales
to catch as much of the runoff before it gets here,
give it time to soak into the soil.
So we don't mess with our pond
and we don't mess with our paver base, which is over there.
All right, the boys are back in town like Ben Lizzie.
I've got this guy,
which is called the banana from Corona tool.
It actually is called the banana.
And then you've got the mattock,
which is Jacque's favorite tool.
- Very effective. - Favorite tool.
So he's going to kind of create the S
and then I'm going to dig it out.
(upbeat music)
So we'll see how well this does but
it's really mostly just digging a couple inch trench here,
throwing a little soil on this side.
We're eventually going to have to solve this side as well
for the paver base because they just compacted it.
So I don't really want to mess with that a lot.
I'm thinking we can maybe go like three feet,
- Do a couple,
- Three feet apart side wind it all the way back to there.
And we got a little treat after this.
All right most of our trenches have been dug here
Roxbury sloppy.
You'll see, in the next episode, how this works out for us,
but the treat is what comes in right back here.
Guess who's in town? (upbeat music) daddy wheat seeds.
We got 20 pounds of the winter wheat.
You guys remember?
We baked a loaf of bread with this wheat last season.
We're starting it off right this time
we're improving on our methods,
Jacque's behind the camera.
He knows that I'm about to bake
probably one of the best loafs of his life,
but he can't compete with that.
He can't compete with it.
I dug with the banana trencher,
just like very shallow trenches.
So all we're thinking about is,
Hey, if it's going to rain anyways,
why don't we throw some rows of wheat in
and just keep it really casual with the way we seed it.
Because trust me, we have plenty.
Oh look, Bobcat.
- [Jacque] So he's here to help.
- Someone is here to help.
Come here Bobcat.
Apparently Jacque said he cared for this cat
as if it was his own and named it Bobcat,
but it's on my property now.
So I'm naming it, Jacque.
This is little Jacque.
(laughter)
Just kidding.
Anyways, we do have a pet cat now, apparently.
So yeah, all I'm going to do is just liberally sprinkle
down the rows here.
We'll just lightly cover them up.
We'll see what happens in the rain.
We have a solution we think.
Jacque dug a trench right here.
What we wanted to do was say,
okay, well you'd rather have the pond
be at the higher point.
You'd rather have the water kind of slipping
away from the pond,
but we couldn't figure out a great way to do that.
So here's what we did.
So what we did is the banana trench daddy over here,
he threw down a beautiful trench that comes this way.
Yeah some water may still run that way,
but we have this huge hole here that we dug
just in case we ever might want an epic jacuzzi.
(soft music) (beep)
And what we did then is put some of these river stones
that actually are also lining the pond.
And why don't you explain the reason we did that Jacque?
- That way as the dirt washes into it,
at least it won't jam up the channel
and the water could still flow in between the rocks.
So even in some dirt gets in,
it'll still be permeable to water.
- So just to recap,
what we did is we cleared the first flush.
We cleared the leaf filters.
We created some weird sort of trenches and swales,
I don't know what you want to call that here.
I also moved some of the mulch near the gravel paver base
because they just put that in today
and it's about to rain tomorrow.
So I want to make sure that
as little water gets in there as possible.
That's it for today's show.
Stay tuned for the next episode
when we actually see what the rain did
and see how well we did,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
(soft music)