Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for
you. What we're going to do today is give you guys an update in my garden here. It's
spring time, weather's beautiful, I try to get out early in the morning to garden because
midday, lately, a couple days ago it's been in the hundreds, today it'll be in the 90's.
It's not too bad, but I like getting out early and late, working primarily and then in the
middle of the day I'll work here and there but stay tuned for an upcoming episode, or
one that I actually already posted on my top tips on how to garden in 100+ degree weather.
In any case, today's update is about my raised beds here. So many of you guys know I built
these raised beds, or I had these built out of these concrete cinder blocks or not quite
cinder blocks but concrete blocks that are made locally here. I want to give you guys
an update because I did not mortar these in, they are just all set on top by a professional
mason guy who does that for a living. Now if I did it, they probably would all fell
over, but I got a professional guy to do it. So pretty much they've all held up fairly
well except one time when I tripped over it, then it kind of got off kilter, but that one's
still holding up in there. I got a ruler kind of like spacing it out properly. But, there's
two areas in my garden were actually the blocks have been falling over. I want to go ahead
and share with you guys why that occurred. These blocks, each one of these blocks are
like 30 pounds each, so it's unlikely that any major movement, aside from an earthquake
would get these guys to move. Just the weight of the soil is not heavy enough to move the
blocks out of place for any large scale. So I want to let you guys know that you guys
can do that. Be sure to check the link down below for how I built these raised beds.
The other thing I want to say is like I get all these questions all the time, John what
about like there's toxic fly ash in the cinder blocks that are being made. So, there's toxins
in everything is the first thing I like to say, especially in the air and the chem trials
and all this kind of stuff. So we want to minimize our exposure.
So it's my personal belief and opinion on my personal blocks that I got because we don't
have any coal fire plants in my area and the fly ash is actually a result of the coal
fire plants that produce power for you guys and they got, basically that's when burn the
coal that's what's left. Then they got to get rid of that stuff, so where do they put
it? They hide it in things like cinder blocks. They get rid of it and dispose of it wherever
they can, because it's a toxic byproduct. So luckily in this area, where these blocks
are made we don't have those kinds of plants. So these blocks contain potentially none of
that stuff or very little if any. That being said, I do want to encourage you guys to always
do the best you can. This was the best I could do in this area. That's what I decided to
do. The other question is even if it is in there,
does that stuff really leach out, get into your soil and then negatively affect your
plants? I don't know the answer to that but I would say it's probably far better to have
some cinder blocks even if it does contain small amounts of fly ash in there, have good
soil, have good microbes in the soil that are breaking down all the bad things in the
soil and grow your own food instead of buying conventional food or even organic, industrial
agriculture food, right. Doing it yourself is always better even if you got some fly
ash cinder blocks. I think in this world today people just get
far too blown out of shape about every little thing, I mean everything in life is not going
to be perfect. But you guys you need to do the best you can. Of course I'd probably rather
grow in cinder blocks than plastic containers, right. But more than cinder blocks with fly
ash I'd probably rather use some stones out of my local creek bed or cut down a tree and
use some wood from a tree. There's all different kinds of things you
can do and there's so many choices and possibilities out there. I want you guys think of possibilities
instead of the things that stop you in your tracks. Always do the best you can, right?
Growing your own food, even if you're growing it in plastic, even if you're growing with
cinder blocks that have fly ash, even if you're growing in a wood that's been treated with,
I don't know, potentially bad chemicals or like railroad ties, which actually I don't
recommend, that's still better than the stuff you're buying at the store because you don't
know how it's being grown, what the fertilizers, synthetic fertilizer being used or the toxins
that are actually on, in the synthetic fertilizers such as heavy metals or biosoils that are
being used to grow your food. Take some responsibility and grow for yourself and when you do buy
the blocks check with the supplier and ask them, hey do you guys use fly ash in there?
I checked with the supplier of these blocks myself. Do the best you can.
Anyways, let's go ahead and give you guys an update of how my blocks are tumbling. So
what we're looking at now is one area that my blocks have tumbled, actually out of place.
Some of them have some cracks that have developed over time, but it's not really an issue, but
this is an issue. Two of the blocks actually were pushed literally
out of place by my plant right here. This is known as the achira or canna edulis, it
has edible starch based tubers down there and what happened is this guy basically the
root mass grew so big it actually pushed the blocks out of place for this one and this
guy. So I got to like hack this out, hack it back, maybe transplant them and then put
my blocks back, I've been kind of too lazy to do that and just kind of walk by and look
at this every day. But this is the power of plants, I mean think
about it, when you have a tree next to your sidewalk you know it'll buckle the sidewalk,
it'll crack the sidewalk. That's what happened here. So is it my fault that I used these
blocks or my fault that I planted these canna here that actually pushed out my blocks? Big
deal, big learning experience right. Cut them back, transplant them, I probably should have
separated them early in the season and potted them up a bunch and shared them with people
because this is actually a really good, viable survival food crop if that's what you guys
are really into. Grow this stuff, it keeps coming back year after year. He's making food,
its powerful enough to basically tumble over the stones, yeah. So yeah, that's the number
one reason why blocks got out of place, the canna.
Now, that's not too surprising because in my other garden where I have wood raised beds
the canna has also pushed out the wood, raised up the wood, popped the nails, or popped the
screws out of the wood holes because the roots and the expansion of such are so strong. So,
I guess, that's explainable. Next let's go ahead and explain the explainable and why
actually the worst damage happened to my concrete blocks.
So what we're looking at now is the worst damage to my concrete block garden or my concrete
raised bed garden. As you guys can see, basically this whole side just fell over. I got to say
I knew this was coming because what happens is I've seen this wall, which is pretty much
straight everywhere was straight up and down and just started to tilt and it got it at
a pretty extreme angle, it was like tilted pretty bad and then finally even though these
are off set, which is actually good, they're kind of interlocked, because they're not exactly
one on top of each other which they would have tumbled earlier. That kept in place and
held it up longer and so what happened was the aguajet that was installed on this side
of the garden is actually, instead of being straight up and down it's at an angle.
So what happens is the water then shoots out at an angle down then what happens is that
the water collects and pools at the bottom of the bricks then what happens is the base
gets wet and then basically it erodes away, kind of like the sand on a beach, it erodes
away. Then basically the footing got compromised and then the whole thing came tumbling over.
So that's kind of what we're seeing here. It's kind of cool to kind of see the plants
and all the roots coming down and growing down like my tomatoes here and how they just
go into the soil. But, I guess the next thing, the next project
I have for today is I've got a bag of sand and a bag of gravel, I'm going to go ahead
and pull these guys out, pull all the soil out, pull gravel down there so that won't
erode away, put sand down, try to level this out, stack the blocks back up, I'm going to
have to chop off some of the soil on the end or push it back because it's been leaning
out and then get this back up against the wall and then maybe try to adjust the aguajet
so it's not spraying down so much because you can see like over in this area, I don't
know if you guys can see that, but it's dry and the bottom's wet. So when I plant a plant
in here unless the roots go down past maybe three, four inches they're not getting water.
So that's why I've been having some problems with the aguajet and it suffering and not
doing so well in certain areas when it wasn't properly installed.
I got a lot of work to do, let's go ahead and get started on this. We'll come back at
you when I got it done. Oh shit! As you guys can see project rebuilt
the wall's underway, my irrigation system just decided to come on, I don't know if you
guys can see that, the aguajet, see how this aguajet is actually spraying out of the hole
and then spraying down. So it's totally not even going like straight, it's actually going
down and they're supposed to be every 12 inches, so you can see one popping out here, the next
12 inches, here's one at 12 inches but for some reason the water's not coming out right
here. Now, is that because it's like blocked up, it should be spraying out and then in
between for a couple feet it's not spraying out the whole four inches.
So I don't know what's up with that, but anyways I'm removing all the dirt off the, that's
hanging over, so I could like scoop it back and try to be careful and not damage too many
of the roots, but this is a good root pruning for my plants. Then we're just going to go
ahead and cut that back, level out my wall, put it back in, and then fill the dirt in
from the top because it was just hanging out way too much because it wasn't, it didn't
have any backing for a long period of time. But yeah, the main issue that caused this
is improper aguajet irrigation install at a nice angle, so the water's actually angling
down, going to the base instead of catapulting up to the root zone, which is where I need
it to be, this is going to need to all get done and I had a feeling this was totally
the situation in this bed for a while. But yeah, if you do get aguajet make sure you
properly install it because this is another thing that I'm having to do because of an
improper aguajet install. So yeah, not necessarily too happy because if it was installed properly
I wouldn't have to be dig this up and be having more fun, I don't know, transplanting some
other stuff in my garden. But yeah, I thought it was cool that actually
just happened to come on when I was making this video, so yeah. I don't know what's up
with some of the other ones, why they're not shooting out and maybe they're clogged up,
blocked up, I have no idea. Anyways, I got to get back to work, since my water break’s
over. Gentleman we did rebuild him. That's like
one of my favorite shows in the 1970's, 6 million dollar man, they rebuilt the 6 million
dollar man. I rebuilt my raised bed wall. Now, it looks almost as good as new, I had
professional come in and set this up, put it in properly the first time and it failed
for two reasons. I was cheap and I only used sand as an underlayment instead of the gravel,
so that probably gave way more plus the aguajet system was spraying down. If only one of these
issues were the case, then it probably still would have been standing.
So I went underneath there, dug it all up, put gravel down, tamped it down, tamped all
these guys back in place. It's not 100% perfect, but man it's, as they say in the government,
close enough for government work, which I think is actually sad. We should aspire to
a higher standard than just doing it good enough. I mean, this is good enough for me,
I could have brought in experts and did, paid them a lot of money but yeah I'm happy with
this as long as it holds my dirt back and so it doesn't fall over and as long as my
plants get better watering, I'm definitely going to be happy.
So in summary I'd like to share with you guys number one, I would actually absolutely do
a rock wall again and absolutely number two I would not mortar it if you're only going
two high, right. As long as you get it set up properly, placed properly with a good foundation,
I think it should be here for years to come with proper water, like if this whole side
had drip irrigation I believe this never would have happened, it's only because of high pressure
and high volumes of water that damaged my raised bed, I know there's a lot of naysayers,
yeah of course if you want to waste more time, waste more materials you could totally mortar
this in, that'd be totally the best. Plus I also like, except in my current relationship,
not commitments. So by not mortaring this in, it's no commitment. If I move or whatever
I could take each block with me, I could take my soil with me, I could turn this backyard
into how it was before and if you mortar it in then it's a lot harder to take apart in
the future, as they say. Other than that like 99.9% of my garden has
stayed in place without failing over aside from the other situation over there that I
need to probably prune my achira back, and pot them up or something like that. But yeah,
it's been totally good. Let's see, update on the wooden raised bed
that I put in years ago, I'm finally starting to see a little bit of rot on some of the
wood panels, so that's going to be a little bit more undertaking than fixing a wall on
here. But that's still holding pretty much, I think I see like two panels that maybe broken
on the bottom. So yeah. Systems that we create to grow food can last
a long time and I want to encourage you guys to invest in something like stones, it's like
what, the Big Bad Wolf, one built his house out of what, hay, straw and wood and brick.
The brick's still standing, the wolf couldn't blow it down, if you have a raised bed you
know it's going to be here for a long time and pass down to your kids, your kids' kids
and all this kind of stuff and woods going to break down and return and feed the earth.
So yeah, it's up to you what material you guys use. I'm glad I went with the concrete
blocks and it's my goal to get the concrete blocks on the other side and replace the plastic
circular raised beds. The problem is that's going to be a lot of work and I don't know
exactly when that's going to happen, if or when it's going to ever happen.
Anyways, I got some ripe tomatoes to harvest and a whole bunch of other things to do in
the garden today. I actually got to fill up because I got to fill up all the dirt behind here, I
got like three different buckets full of dirt that I pulled aside to try to get in there
to work this, but I'm going to some loose fill, because this stuff's a little bit wet,
it's not going to go all the way down the bottom, so I got some lose stuff, I'm just
going to put in there and I had to dig up a couple plants to correct this situation.
So I'm going to go ahead and plant my plants back, fill it up, and we'll be done with this
project today and yeah. That's what you get all the naysayers that says that's not going
to hold, it held pretty well except for some issues and you guys could do it too. That's
what I'm here just to share with you guys. Well, anyways I'm rambling, got to get going.
If you guys enjoyed this episode hey please give me a thumbs up to let me know. Also be
sure to check my past episodes I have over 1100 episodes now teaching you guys all aspects
and how you guys can garden and sharing with you guys my trials and tribulations. Also
be sure to click that subscribe button right down below to be notified of my new and upcoming
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video with somebody else that says oh yeah man, stacking concrete blocks it's not going
to work, it totally can work, unless you got issues like I do.
So once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We'll see you next time and until then remember:
keep on growing! Latest Episode on Growing Your Greens!
Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for
you. What I'm going to do today for you guys is the top five ways to save water in your
container garden.