This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for
you, and what we’re going to do today is plant out yet another Growums box.
So as you can see behind me, I have almost 20 Growums boxes now that I’ve set up, put
a good soil mix into, and planted out and as you can see, some of it, or actually most
all of it is actually growing very well.
Now I like the Growums boxes because it offers you guys greater flexibility to grow where
you normally couldn’t.
I mean we are on a concrete pad right now, and while you could set up a raised bed on
here, it’d get kind of messy.
In the Growums box it’s a self-contained, self-watering container garden.
And it’s a fairly large one at that, it’s about two feet by one foot.
If you want to learn more about these Growums boxes, please check out my past videos where
actually bought these and set them up, you’ll also see the exact soil mixture that I’m
using in here because that actually is a key component to get excellent growing results
with the Growums boxes.
Because the soil mixture that you’re using in here needs to be able to wick the water
up because this is a self-watering container.
Now today what I’m going to be doing is planting something new out in my Growums boxes
although I did plant some over there.
What we’re going to do today is plant out some garlic.
So you might be thinking “John, why the heck are you planting garlic starts, isn’t
that way more expensive and isn’t it much more easier and less expensive to just plant
the garlic cloves from the store?”
Well that’s absolutely correct, so the thing is I always recommend you guys do the easiest
and best thing in your situation.
So planting individual cloves of garlic is absolutely the cheapest way and yes, you can
even go to your local grocery store, buy the garlic and plant that out in your garden.
But be aware, much of the garlic being sold in the USA nowadays from what I have seen,
has been grown in China, so if that’s a concern to you, don’t get the stuff from
the grocery store.
I want to encourage you guys always to grow the best quality and highest quality, whether
it’s a fruit, vegetable or even a bulbous type crop like garlic, get some heirloom varieties,
there’s over 100 different varieties of garlic and I have a really good episode, check
my past videos where I’m at the National Heirloom Expo, and go to a garlic grower’s
table where I go over 100 varieties of garlic and each one has a unique flavor, some are
what he would call wimpy garlic which I’m actually growing over there, and some are
more strong-flavored, and some may be better in your specific climate.
So when you buy at the grocery store you don’t know what variety you’re getting and you
don’t know how well it’s going to do in your climate.
So these are plants that will do well in this climate here, and that’s one of the reasons
why I’m growing them and the other reason is because in general you want to start garlic
in the fall in your garden, before the frost, and you’re going to get these guys in the
ground, they’re going to start to bud up and make a nice home for them, and depending
on where you live, if it’s not too cold in the winter, they’ll grow right on through
the winter like I have in my bed behind me there, and if it freezes where you’re at,
they’re just going to dig in and hunker down during the winter, but as soon as it
starts to warm up in the spring time, they’re going to sprout, send up their shoots and
be ready to grow and continue their development.
So, at this time it’s currently March, and I don’t necessarily recommend starting garlic
in March although you could if you want to, and you know I always encourage you guys to
experiment, I mean just because the book says you’ve got to start the garlic in the fall
and it’s March or whatever, feel free to try it if you really want to see what happens,
because you might get excellent growing results.
In the past I’ve always grown garlic because it is what I call a long season crop, so it’s
not just ready in 30 days like radishes, it takes a good number of months for it to develop
and grow that little bulb underneath the ground so that we can eat it.
So in this case, because it is rather late to be starting garlic now from the seed or
the little cloves, I got the plants that were started actually back in the fall and growing
in a greenhouse actually all during that time.
So what I’m going to do is we’re going to plant garlic plants in this one foot by
two foot Growums container, and the standard square foot gardening spacing on the garlic
is about four inches.
So we’re going to pack these in at about four inch spacing, and yes, even though it’s
a small Growums container that cost me 10 bucks, I’m going to plant these garlics
in here, and normally I wouldn’t necessarily plant extra garlic because I’ve got a whole
raised bed, but I was picking up some plant starts and he made me a deal I could not refuse,
so hey what the heck more garlic, garlic’s a good thing, I’ve got to remember I’ve
got to keep away the vampires, they’re going to get me.
So what we’re going to do here is we’re going to go ahead and just very simply we’ve
filled up this Growums container probably three quarters of the way full, and you know
normally when you plant plants you might actually dig a hole and then put this in, but what
I like to do in some cases when the plants are more mature, more developed and I have
space to do this, I like to just place the plants where they’re going to grow, and
then I like to basically top fill and fill in all the cracks, and it’s a lot easier
than digging holes and trying to plant then you could mess up the roots.
As you can see, these guys are ready to be planted, because roots are actually coming
out the bottoms of the little pots here, I always recommend also you guys reuse all your
pots, you know save them, they’re a valuable resource to have.
As you can see I have all these pots in a standard concrete mixing tub, and actually
I put some coconut coir in the bottom to keep extra moisture, especially is important if
I’m away for a couple of days, this is one of the ways I like to give me a couple of
days extra so that these plants will not run out of water.
So I mean this is just going to be pretty easy, what we’re going to do is we just
watered these a little while ago, we’re just going to go ahead and tap these out and
make sure all the roots come out very carefully and easily without damaging them.
And then the other thing that’s very important because this is getting rootbound here, we’re
going to try to carefully tease out some of these roots so that they’re not all running
around in a ball.
And yeah you know I’m breaking some and whatnot, but you know what, they’re going
to regenerate, but you don’t want to just break them up too much.
So just trying to get these to come out from their little massive ball they’re in, this
is definitely a really good root ball.
These were planted in some good organic compost from what the grower told me here.
So besides teasing these roots out the other thing that’s very critical to using what
I recommend you use in your garden when gardening for the best results, I mean after all I’m
growing my garden not just for a hobby, not just for fun, but I’m growing the stuff
I grow to eat.
And I want to grow a large volume of food in the smallest amount of space as possible,
but also high quality food.
So besides adding the things like the rock dust, the trace minerals, and some of the
beneficial microbes in the soil already, I’m going to add something that’s very important,
and it’s this stuff right here.
This is actually called the Great White Premium Mycorrhizae, and this also contains a beneficial
bacteria.
So the beneficial bacteria in the mycorrhizae actually live on the plants’ roots and help
bring nutrients into the plants so your plants will actually get more nutrition by using
this stuff.
Because the plants will have more nutrition within them, then that means they’re going
to grow healthier, grow bigger, and yield more.
So definitely that’s really important to me.
And the secret is, you really don’t need to use a lot of this stuff, just a little
pinch on the roots and you’re good to grow.
So what I like to do is I like to get the large size of the mycorrhizae, and then what
I like to do is actually put it in a little shaker jar, and actually they have a little
small size here that I use, it’s what I refill, but you could also use an old spice
jar or whatever, and what I like to do is I like to then flip open the cap, oh and before
I go on I want to mention, I mean some people have said “Hey John, where do you get that
stuff?”
Well you want to check your local hydroponics shop, unfortunately most garden centers or
even big box stores, they have no clue what mycorrhizae is, and they don’t sell it separately.
It might be included in some of the soil mixes they sell, but I always recommend you buy
it separately and apply it directly to your roots for the best results.
Now if you can’t find this at your local hydroponics store, you could go to the website
For Plant Success which is the company that makes this, and their website is plant-success.com.
So what we’re going to do here is just very simply just sprinkle a little bit, oops I
sprinkled too much.
And now that we’ve got that set up, we’re just going to go ahead and place this where
we want it, and we’re just going to do the next one.
Once again we’re going to go ahead and tease these roots out and I guess planting garlic
is pretty doggone simple, so I’ll probably just do the rest and I’ll come back at you
when I got this whole thing filled up.
So I’m almost all done, and I got some good news, I thought I was only going to be able
to fit 18 plants in here, but I was able to fit 21 plants in this Growums container.
So here’s the last one, we’re going to go ahead and plant out.
Once again, dumping this out, we’re going to tease out the roots a little bit, and we’re
going to go ahead and use the mycorrhizae – the great white stuff.
So the thing to remember is that you don’t really need to use the mycorrhizae, but I
highly encourage it.
I mean will plants grow without the mycorrhizae?
Absolutely.
Will you get better results with it?
In my opinion and my testing that I’ve done, you will absolutely get better results using
it than without.
If you don’t trust me, try an experiment on yourself – not on yourself but on your
plants, and see what happens.
Basically 90 percent of the plants in the world have a symbiotic relationship with the
mycorrhizae.
Some of the garden plants that don’t generally have a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizae
would be the Brassica plants so that family of plants.
So we’re just going to go ahead and stick this guy in here and I think pretty much we
have four inch spacing for the most part except maybe this last row we’re getting kind of
tight at three inches because I’m trying to shove a few more things into a tight space,
and I like when I shove big things in tight spaces.
It definitely feels better for me, and probably hopefully for the plants too.
As you can see we got all the plants in here and now once this is full, we’re just going
to go ahead and take some compost here, we’re going to go ahead and sprinkle this in all
the little extra spaces in between the plants that didn’t get full.
And once again this is a similar mix to the mix that’s already in the bed, so this actually
has a fair amount of coconut coir in there that’ll help with the wicking action.
Wicking action is very important for these self-watering containers.
Now if you do get these Growums boxes, they do come with a coconut coir block that they
recommend you use to plant in, and unless this was my last option I wouldn’t just
plant in straight coconut coir because the problem with that is it actually doesn’t
have the level of nutrition that your plants will need so you will end up having to use
additional fertilizer later or you won’t get good results.
So you get to choose what you want to do.
I personally like to make a really good nutritious mix and grow in that so that I do not have
to add additional fertilizer later.
Once I got all this in, I’m just going to go ahead and shake this down and try to get
some of this mixture into all the cracks and crevices here, and before I go I do want to
say that you might be thinking “John, do you really like garlic that much?”
Well you know I have about one bed of garlic and that’s a small percentage of the amount
of food that I grow.
I like growing garlic because number one, it’s a really easy crop to grow.
And I do use some garlic, and I mean just with one bed, because garlic, you harvest
it and then it lasts throughout the rest of the year, just by growing one bed you could
have enough garlic for your needs, and this depends on how much garlic you like to eat.
Now, you know besides just eating the bulb, like the garlic bulb and the cloves that we’re
all used to eating, another thing that many people don’t know is that you can actually
just harvest the greens.
So I like the harvest the outer green leaves here, and you can just harvest them and chop
them up, put them into salads, and they have that nice garlic flavor.
So even when I don’t have the garlic I like to harvest the garlic greens for the nice
garlic flavor, but don’t expect to get kissed after you eat the garlic greens.
Alright so here’s the last handful of compost we’re putting in, I think we’re pretty
topped off.
Now normally when transplanting I like to be very critical of the depth at which the
plant is planted.
Say we’ve got a plant and it’s at a certain soil level, I always strive, unless it’s
a tomato or something, to keep the soil level the same because that may encourage stem rot
on your plants.
Or if you plant it too shallow, that’s not a good thing either.
But with the garlic it’s not as critical.
So I did probably raise the soil level up just a little bit, but they’re going to
be fine.
The last thing you’ve got to do after planting all your plants is to give it a little water,
so we’re just going to go ahead and turn the hose on, and in with these garden beds
I like to top water just a little bit to get the soil wet because if the soil’s too dry
it’s not going to wick up like it’s supposed to.
And once we’ve got the top wet plus this helps get the soil at all the different air
pockets if any.
Once we got that wet then I like to ahead and take the hose deal off and we’re going
to go ahead and fill up the Growums box reservoir with the water so I like to just put this
right in there and turn it on, and we’ll just let this sit a little while, and back
in the back you guys can’t see but it’s that little dipstick thing, it’s going to
raise up to the appropriate level when it’s all full.
Now all my other plants that I’ve grown in these Growums self-watering containers
have been actually doing amazing.
Some of the things are actually even going to flower right now because of the extremely
warm weather and these are more of the Asian green mustard-ish type plants behind me.
So so far, so good, I’m really happy with these Growums boxes, I will continue to experiment
growing different crops to see what I can get away with and what’s going to grow well.
I’m highly confident that these garlics should do fairly well, and we’ll see real
soon at the end of the season how well they’re going to do.
One of the things I like about the Growums grow box is that it makes it a lot easier
to garden, especially if you’ve never gardened before I recommend getting a Growums grow
box or something like an EarthBox, which this is just an inexpensive knock-off of, and you’ll
be successful the first time.
Once again I want to show you guys that yes you can grow in a small tight space, just
a one foot by two foot Growums box, 21 garlic plants which at the end of the season are
going to grow countless garlic greens to eat and also 21 of the garlic bulbs that I’ll
then be able to save and eat or preserve and eat them as I see fit.
And maybe that’s why I don’t have a girlfriend yet, anyways.
So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com,
we’ll see you next time and remember, keep on growing.