Mail Time, Episode Two - Birthday Edition, baby.
I've got something amazing at the end of this video that I have to show you,
it's going to be a mainstay of the Epic Urban Homestead. But first of all,
let's kick it off with this amazing book.
It's called No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture:
pesticide-free methods for restoring soil and growing nutrient-rich
high-yielding crops. It's by Bryan O'Hara. I'll leave a link in the description.
I remember who gave me this because it came from an Instagram direct message.
But off the top of my head, I don't remember who the actual person was.
So I know the experience of who gave it to me,
but the tag is not really coming to mind, but it's an amazing book.
I've heard about it before, but I have not read it and just flipping through it,
it looks like there's some absolutely amazing techniques that are gonna be very,
very handy here at the Urban Homestead. Next up,
I got something that,
I actually bought these but I wanted to put these in mail time anyways.
So this is from my friend Marco. I had him on the podcast.
His tag is Microbes by Marco.
He's a Korean natural farming type of adherent,
although he calls it natural farming.
So what this is is what he calls his Alfalfa Meal JLF.
JADAM liquid fertilizer plus IMO4,
indigenous microorganisms 4.
It's like the fourth sort of evolution of cultivating indigenous microorganisms.
And it's just a really cool thing that we talked about at length on his
podcast.
So this is a method of farming that is basically using what's naturally around
you to cultivate inputs at an extremely low cost to help rehabilitate your soil
and transform the space.
And so it's something that I'm going to be studying quite a bit more of.
I bought a couple books on it already and I've been kind of thumbing through
them, but I bought some of Marco's stuff cause I wanted to support him.
So amazing dude, very helpful. And I just wanted to test it out.
So this is alfalfa meal,
alfalfa grains that have been inoculated with various different cultivations
that he's made. And so stay tuned.
This is probably going to be a mainstay here at the Homestead as well.
So thank you to Marco. Next up I've got an amazing,
amazing gift here from Luyi.
So Luyi is on our show, which I still can't tell you about, but I will soon.
Luyi was a guest on the TV show.
And we talked about this on the show just a little bit.
This is a birdhouse gourd or bottle gourd,
and I'm probably gonna make it into a birdhouse. So you can see,
still got some seeds in there.
But Luyi also sent me a very nice note about, you know,
how she decided to process these and care for them.
So this is going to make it somewhere in the Homestead,
I might hang it from a tree. We'll see if we can get someone nesting in there.
Very, very cool. I'm excited.
I'll probably end up growing some bottle gourds as well,
but for now I've got this one from Luyi next.
I have a very nice note from Patrick.
Patrick says I live in zone 5b in Ashland, Ohio.
I've come across your YouTube channel. It was very enlightening.
I'm interested in furthering my own knowledge regarding gardening.
I've done some research,
but I want to improve my understanding of the essentials.
Do you have any recommendations for online resources? Well,
I've got quite a bit in the Epic Gardening world,
but I'm certainly not the only person who talks about gardening.
So I would say fundamentals - I just released an entire article - the
45 books that I think every gardener should own.
Obviously you don't need to own all 45, but you know, you'll start collecting,
I will tell you that much. So I'm going to leave that in the description.
Patrick,
it is difficult for me to get back to a letter one-on-one so I'm doing it right
here for ya. Glad you're enjoying the content.
And hopefully that resource down in the video will help you out.
This one I'm really intrigued by. So this one is a handwritten note.
It is from Aaron. Now Aaron says, hi, Kevin, my name is Aaron.
I've been a subscriber since I think June, 2019.
I liked the Epicness of your garden. I love that!
You helped me start a garden and an Epic dragonfruit plant.
I will send pictures. Aaron, that's awesome.
I love hearing about people growing dragonfruit.
I like the idea of a subscriber garden and I want to send a special bean seed
called the red sword bean or the Juan Bobo bean.
I'm sending one bean and that's enough to grow huge and make one and a half foot
long beans. This is a family heirloom for my grandparents in Puerto Rico. Wow!
That is really cool Aaron. He says also,
please excuse my spelling and the quality of my handwriting. Aaron,
your handwriting is for sure better than mine so I wouldn't beat yourself up
about it. He also included some photos of this bean in growing,
take a look at it.
This is the dragonfruit that he started with the trellis method.
And then he also has some resources here. There's another bean.
We also have this. But, he sent the seed.
So let me show you the seed real quick. I haven't even yet seen it myself.
So let's take a look. Well, I'm excited. What do we got in here? Ooh,
there's more than one, I think. Look at this seed. Holy,
look how big this seed is. This is a huge bean.
One seed. Okay Aaron, I will cherish this with my life.
I'll do my best to cultivate this. I may wait until the next season,
unless you think I can get this out before we get into our winter.
But thank you so much. The Juan Bobo bean. Wow! What a cool one.
Here is a package that I thought was used to pack something up.
But in fact, the packing material is actually what was sent.
And so this is sheep's wool and I believe this is from a person -
we talked in our email - but I'm completely forgetting the name at this moment.
I believe it says Arlan. So Arlan, thank you so much.
This is a sheep's wool product that you use, I believe,
as a top dress mulch approach. And so actually, no,
there's a little letter in here.
So let me stop making stuff up and actually just start telling you what it's all
about. Havelock wool. It says, congratulations.
Here's your first hands-on experience with Havelock wool.
Our wool is grown in New Zealand. Wow. And manufactured in the USA.
Why should you insulate with Havelock wool? Well,
I guess you can use this as a lot of different things. Fertilize your garden,
our wool insulation is a nutrient-rich compost. So when it's very,
very long useful life has ended it can go back to the earth, not a landfill.
Hey, that's pretty cool. I've heard of a lot of UK gardeners using wool.
I have yet to use it.
So this could be something that maybe I test out in some containers. We'll see.
Thank you so much. Havelock wool. Next up. I have this product here.
It's called Chonex. I believe I got hit up by these people.
It is an insect frass, so it's the waste of insects.
And I believe the reason to use it is because of the,
let me see if I can open it up here. There's a high chitin content or chitinase,
which effectively helps a plant repel insects,
I believe is the main reason you would use insect frass.
But certainly something I'll be experimenting with. If I find that I like it,
you'll see a little bit more about it here on the channel. Next up,
my good friend Steve from the Urban Worm Company sent me some worm castings.
I still have some getting set up over here in the Urban Worm Bag,
but for now I'll have a nice little bit of worm castings to sprinkle out in the
garden. Thanks Steve, take care.
Now I told you that there was something very special that I received and this
was not from the mail.
This was from my assistant and she came by to drop off some plants and she
also dropped this off. And what an amazing, look at this.
Look at this. This is so cool!
I don't even know what to do. It's hard. It's like steel.
It's like burned laser-edged, steel. Epic Urban Homestead with this awesome bee.
A sign of things to come here on the channel.
But thank you so much to my assistant, you know who you are.
I very much appreciate this and I would love to know where you guys think this
should go in the garden. Some awesome stuff in today's mail time.
It seems like you guys really like the mail episodes. I love them as well.
I mean, who doesn't like getting cool stuff from around the world.
But also just kind of reminds me, you know,
how many of you are out there engaging with the stuff that I'm doing.
And likewise, now I get to engage back with you in a more tangible way,
you know, putting things from you into my actual garden and home. So again,
thanks to anyone who sent anything. You know who you are.
There's a couple of letters that I received that I opted not to read here on the
channel, just because they're more personal in nature, but, uh, yeah.
Until next time good luck in the garden and keep on growing.