Welcome back to the Epic Urban Homestead everyone. Kevin Espiritu here.
[Inaudible].
Not a lot has changed to be honest with you.
I have a really cool garden that I spun up that I'll show you a little bit later
on in the video. But this video will really be about the strategy, the planning,
and you know, what are the big projects that I want to do? And in what order?
It really seems like with this much space,
you have to decide the major things you want to do,
and then prioritize in the chronology,
like when that actually is going to happen. And if you're going to build it,
if you're going to buy it,
if you're going to outsource it or some combination of those. So first of all,
let's update you on the space and then we'll get into some of these project
ideas.
One of the very first things I did was remove the crappy sink that's sitting
right there and I replaced it with my potting bench,
which eventually I'll hook up to the water.
It's not hooked up just yet cause I need to get some better plumbing.
But I needed something like this.
And what's nice is I can now reuse this water because it comes out in this
bucket right here. So I can then irrigate my landscape with this.
So I've got a bunch of starts here,
but the real gem of this space right now is the
irrigated grow bag garden. This thing,
it's about 27ish grow bags I would say.
And they're all irrigated with 360 degree adjustable drip spikes,
which are just absolutely one of the most handy tools of all time.
Cleared out some of that deadly foxtail barley for this space.
We laid down just some really cheap,
quick landscape fabric and some bark just to provide a little bit of structure
to the space. But really it's just an assortment of different things.
We've got some leafy greens, some herbs.
Over here we have some of our vining crops. Got a squash over there.
Over here we have some corn.
So I'm just testing a bunch of different varieties of things in these grow bags.
Here's a really nice one. This is a little bit of a mixed use.
So you have some leafy greens up top and then I've got zinnias and salvia as a
bit of a pollinator attractant. Here's another cool idea. It's pepper, lettuce,
lettuce, lettuce and then a nice pepper right here. And look at that.
We even have a little little guy right there. By the way for small scale,
where you control the stirrup hoe,
is the best cause it's got 45 degree angle and it's just a little bit of a
serrated tip and you just slice right through roots at the soil surface.
So the first major project, I'm scared to stand up in here,
that's going to go down is probably the shed
removal and replacement. A lot of you said you should keep this shed.
A lot of you said you should tear this shed down.
I've decided to tear it down and I'll explain to you why I've decided to tear it
down. So first of all,
if I stand up I will hit it and it's not fun.
Like I'll hit this rafter right here with my head. So I don't want that.
Number two though, it's nine foot by seven foot. So 63 square feet,
but the maximum unpermitted size for a shed here in San Diego is 10 by 12.
So that's 120 square feet so it's almost double the square footage,
with more height. And when I rebuild it,
that means I get to put it in an area of the home that makes a little bit more
sense. So that's what I'm going to do. Of course,
there's a bunch of lumber here that I'm sure that I can repurpose.
So I'll deconstruct this shed and use it some point in the future.
It'll get reused. But what I want to do, and I'll show you a second,
is pour a concrete pad and put a more semipermanent shed that's a lot
bigger than I can store my gardening tools, my supplies,
perhaps put a little outdoor desk or workstation in there,
perhaps a little set where I can film some videos for you guys.
So let me show you some ideas I have, as far as the placement.
We're in my back patio right now and as we go this way we're walking east.
And so here's the shed that we just were in and here's the rest of the backyard
property. So this would be the northeast corner right there.
I want to reserve this area over here for the potential addition of an
ADU or accessory dwelling unit. It's not going to happen right away,
maybe not for a couple years, but it's probably going to be over there.
So I don't want to put it over there,
but at the same time I don't want it just sitting right here in the middle.
So my thought right now is to move the shed into this area
underneath the shaded pepper tree, which that might need some trimming.
But maybe to pour a concrete pad right here and put a 10 by 12 foot shed
right in this zone. Now,
as far as how I'm actually going to build the shed and by the way,
check out my air mattress set up, pretty Epic, right?
I want to build a lot of stuff for this property,
but going straight from not a ton of building experience to a 10 by 12 foot shed
that I actually want to withstand the test of time is probably not my best
option.
So I want to show you a couple ideas I have as far as who I'm going to use to
help me build the shed. So my friend Ben Sullins,
who's also a YouTuber and also in San Diego, he recommended these guys,
Socal Sheds. They've got a bunch of different styles.
So the ones that really stuck out to me were the Tall Peak,
which I'll pop into in a second, the Studio Shed or the Lean-To.
Now the ones that don't really, I mean,
I don't really want a red barn style look, this Gambrel style model.
Or a Porch Shed. I don't really care to have a Custom Shed.
I'm not that crazy right now. Yeah.
These ones just look a little bit more vintage to me and my, my home is vintage.
It's a hundred something years old, but I it's just not, it's a Spanish home.
It's not like a barn style home. So I'll pop open these two.
I'm leaning between either the Lean-To or the Tall Peak.
The Tall Peak is just like a classic shed, right? It's just your,
your normal style shed with the normal peaked roof.
And it would be 10 by 12 foot and you get to choose all your customizations,
like your window, sidings and your roofing options and stuff.
But something like this could be really cool. Now,
if I wanted to stick more towards the flat roof style,
I could go with a Lean-To.
And the other thing I thought might be nice about a Lean-To,
is that if you take a look,
obviously the water's running primarily off of one side of the roof.
And so I could more easily do water capture without having to put, you know,
like rain gutters around the whole thing.
So Lean-To is probably going to be the one I go with.
Now what's kind of cool about these guys is they have all these options, right?
So there's all these sort of build a shed customizations you can do.
You can add different siding, you can add different doors, you can add windows,
ventilation, custom options.
So I've been fielding some quotes from the people at Socal Sheds.
We'll see if I end up going with it.
I'll probably want to pour a concrete pad out there as well,
just for additional stability. The shed that's out there right now is on,
I think it's called pier and beam.
And I'd rather just have something a little more stable,
especially if I want to connect that shed to future hardscaping that I do in
that section of the backyard.
The next most obvious thing in my mind to solve is irrigation and where the
water will be sourced and how it's going to spread out to different zones of the
property. Now what's hard is,
if I don't know exactly what those zones will be and what their water needs will
be, it's hard to then plan that out. But I do know this,
I know that a single hose bib is not going to cut it.
So that's one of my next steps, is to research,
okay how do I add more hose bibs?
And then actually add a sort of irrigation hub to the property so I can
send water to various areas, either on timers or in various amounts,
or just really get it all solved in a way that's scalable and not wasteful.
So we're in the front yard now. And this little section,
as I mentioned before in prior videos,
is going to be a replica of the Epic Garden.
But there are some significant changes I'd like to make because number one,
that's a very cramped space at my old garden where even the distance between
beds is sometimes less than a foot. So I'm having to really shimmy in there.
And I just need more space.
I want it to still be a showcase of small space urban gardening techniques,
but I'll probably have pathways that are at least two feet wide, you know,
following a lot of the classic garden spacing principles. But for right now,
I'm leaving it bare because we're going to be filming the TV show here over the
course of the next month.
And I don't know exactly where everything's going to go,
all the projects we're going to build for that show. So I'm leaving this bare.
And then we get to the orchard area.
I'm hanging out here underneath a loquat tree, very fitting. In fact,
this is two loquat trees, and then we have a lemon tree that's over there.
And this is the front yard orchard idea that I have. So if we go this way,
you go more towards the front of the house where that front garden we just
talked about is. As you go this way,
you go more towards the property line that way and the front actually of the
yard. And so I'm sitting under the loquat tree.
I thought the loquat tree makes a nice dividing line between whatever garden it
is that I end up having over here and a mini backyard,
although it would be a front yard, orchard design.
And the reason that I think that is number one,
you should always kind of go with what you have on the property.
So I have loquat tree, lemon tree. They seem to be doing pretty well,
although they need some serious pruning and care and we'll get into that in
other videos. So why not plant more in this area? Gets a lot of good sun.
I can grow almost any type of fruit tree that I want, I would say,
depending on the variety. And so that's what I've really been thinking about.
Now, the thing that really you have to research when it comes to a,
an orchard design for a small space,
and this really is still a small space from an orchard's perspective,
is the layout. What varieties are you choosing,
in what spacings and how do you actually lay that all out?
Now I've been researching out of Dave Wilson Nursery's,
I think it's called Backyard Orchard Design. And the general principle there is,
let's say you want to grow, I don't know, let's say you wanna grow some apples,
right? Well,
instead of growing one apple or four huge apple spaced really far apart,
what you would do is you would manage the vertical height,
make that your responsibility to manage the vertical height of your fruit trees,
and plant them a little bit closer together than you normally would and choose
varieties that mature at different points in the season.
So you have succession sowing in a sense,
but just based on the timing of when that particular cultivar produces.
And so that's probably the approach I'm going to take,
but there's a lot of research still to do as far as the actual fruits I want.
Then within that, the cultivars that I want of those fruits,
and then within all of that, once I know that,
where is this all going to be planted? How's it going to be planted?
How's it going to be irrigated? And all of those things.
But needless to say this is, I think,
the area that I want to do that in because it provides some privacy while I
don't have any fencing going,
you look straight into the back of my yard right now.
So it provides some privacy, sort of this urban jungle oasis type of look.
And I just think it makes sense to go with what's already here.
We're now in the one car garage of the Epic Urban Homestead.
And there's some little things that I want to do here. First of all,
there's no shelving. There's no shelving in this entire place.
And there's some boards here and obviously you have your studs.
And so what I'd like to do is get some very simple shelving up so all of my
stuff is off the ground so that I can probably coat this.
I'm probably going to end up coating this with some sort of like epoxy or
something and leveling it all out because this is the area that I'm going to be
building most of the stuff that eventually makes it out into the property.
And so I want a nice clean, smooth, efficient,
like well designed and well organized space that I don't have to be, you know,
moving around all sorts of nonsense. And so storage shelves,
as well as kind of cleaning up that floor are the goals for this.
Obviously a lot of this will end up making it into the shed that eventually gets
built but, for the time being, it's all being stored in here. By the way,
check this out. This is the biggest grow bag I've ever seen.
It's a 100 gallon grow bag from Bootstrap Farmer that I'll be planting out in a
future video. So stay tuned for that. Thing is huge. Absolutely massive!
There's quite a lot to do here on the property. I mean,
the stuff we've talked about so far, just a shed to store stuff,
it's not that revolutionary, um. You know, a,
an idea for where the orchard is gonna go,
an idea for where the front yard garden is going to go.
The strategy for the irrigation. Yes, it's all there,
but it's sort of just like birthing itself into my mind as I get a feel for the
space. I think that really is the important part.
I don't want to make any huge moves without knowing how this space
grows, how it works, how much it costs to water,
how much my electricity bill is going to be for powering different sorts of
things. And so those are the main considerations right now.
Now there's a lot to do as far as moving the garden over.
A lot of you want to see how the garden's going to get moved over here.
I'm going to cover that here on the channel.
Talk a little bit more about the financials of cost of some of the things that
I'm building and designing and installing here on the property.
As well as just like improving the soil,
basic homesteady type of content that I'd like to put out here.
So that's it for today's tour. Hope you guys enjoyed episode two complete.
Stay tuned, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.