(mellow acoustic music)
- In today's video.
I wanted to talk about some problems
that I've noticed in my garden
that maybe some of you guys have also experienced,
and how I want to approach them.
And hopefully throughout this video,
some of the problems that I point out
might trigger some ideas
of things that you might be experiencing.
And without further ado,
let's start with this tree right behind me.
So this part of the garden
has been sort of trailing along very slowly this season.
And I've been trying to rack my brain why,
and I've come to the conclusion
that it has everything to do with the sun.
And more importantly,
has everything to do with trees and shrubs
blocking the sun from getting to this garden.
So this part of the garden
actually right now has some sun.
It's noon, but it got zero sun up until noon.
So from the morning up until 10:00, 11:00 a.m.,
this side of the garden gets absolutely no sun.
And in fact,
you probably can't even see my potato bed right here
because it's not getting any sun.
And these potatoes are, oh, maybe six inches tall.
So the solution to this problem is that
that tree right there is coming out entirely.
It's non-native, non-productive.
And it also gives me the opportunity
to actually expand my asparagus bed
all the way back to that wall,
which I'm extremely excited about.
These hedges over here are gonna get a big haircut.
And over here out of the shot
is this huge jacaranda tree, that that's a little bit TBD.
I'm not sure how I'm gonna deal with that one yet.
But basically, as you build your garden,
throughout the seasons,
you might notice that all the trees around it
are starting to grow much more vigorously.
That's because their roots can go out quite a distance.
So as this garden has been getting watered,
as it's been getting fertility,
all these trees and shrubs
and everything around it
have also been benefiting from that.
So while that is kind of good,
it's also starting to create some problems here,
because I built this garden so I can get vegetables to eat,
not to grow shrubs for privacy.
So that needs to go. This needs to go.
But just pay attention to your surroundings.
You might be surprised by what's growing around your garden.
This next item on the list
is something that I say I'm gonna work on
every single season, which is taking out plants
that shouldn't be in the garden any longer.
And this right here is a classic example
of one of my nemesis.
It is the Rapini, or broccoli rabe.
And the reason why I call this my nemesis
is because I've tried to grow this so many times.
Every single time, it bolts,
and I never get to eat anything.
But this is, right now at this point,
like it's already flowered.
It's even making seed pods.
So at this point, it's literally doing nothing for me
or even the bees.
And I'm just wasting space, water, resources.
So I really need to be better about coming around
and pruning out all these plants
that no longer do anything in the garden.
And especially when they're covered in disease,
like powdery mildew, and bacteria-infested tomatoes.
Like, those should be out of the ground
as soon as they start becoming a major disease issue
rather than me waiting for that last tomato.
The real beauty here is that nothing goes to waste
when you have chickens.
For the next item on the agenda,
I'm in here and my potted sort of tree and bush zone.
And what I have in front of me is a Bearss lime,
Fuerte avocado, and right behind me is this pomegranate,
which is a believe a red silk.
And anyway, the reason why we're here
is because one thing that I've been slipping on,
I know this is a very common problem for a home gardener,
is fertilizing your trees at the right time
and doing it frequently enough.
So in this case, we're coming into the tail end of winter,
going into early spring.
And this is when, as you can see,
this avocado is starting to put out new leaves.
This lime is absolutely covered in flowers.
The pomegranate behind me, erupting in leaves.
So right now what they're telling us
is we need nutrients, and we need them now,
because we are growing, and we don't wanna slow down.
So what I'm gonna do here
is show you guys how to do it,
and also do it because this is something
I really need to be changing this year.
So I'm gonna scratch off maybe the top inch of soil here,
and I'm gonna do a half a pot at a time,
reach in here take some of this Espoma citrus
and avocado food,
and just sort of sprinkle it on top,
and rough it in with my fingers.
And then I'll come back, push that soil right on top of it.
And then go back on this other side and do the same thing.
So what we're doing here
is we're making sure it's buried under the soil.
So that next time when I come by and water this,
which will actually be right after this,
this soil is going to get wet.
It's going to soak into that fertilizer,
and that fertilizer is gonna soak into it.
And these tree roots are able to get it.
So you really wanna make sure
that you're not just sprinkling it on top,
but you bury it in
but this is something that I should be doing
to all my trees at every turn of the season.
So whenever you see your trees really starting
to grow very quickly,
like having a lot of blooms and buds developing,
it's generally a good time to actually fertilize.
So onto thing number four,
we're standing next to this rats nest
of hoses, adapters, timers, drips, all sorts of situations.
And that brings me to the point of irrigation.
Bringing water to your plants is critical.
It's essential.
They won't grow without water, especially in San Diego.
If they're waiting on the rain,
they're gonna be waiting a long time.
Let's just say that.
But basically what I have here
is I did actually bring up a mainline PVC here.
Before, I only had a hose
that was like 50 feet away from there.
That was a whole 'nother nightmare.
But as I've kind of started to solve this issue,
I've been trying to use these sort of cheap timers.
And, well, let's just say that these cheap timers,
you get what you pay for.
This one has already given up the ghost.
It just kinda sits there.
It doesn't actually time anymore.
And so what happened is that I trusted it,
I walked away, came back in the morning,
and my whole garden was flooded with water.
And that's what 12 hours of drip irrigation will do,
is eventually they will actually give you a ton of water.
So this year, I really need to focus on building
a proper irrigation system.
I'm looking into different timers and setups
and all sorts of things like that.
If anyone has any suggestions
for what has worked well for them,
I'd love to hear them.
So this year, I really, really need to make sure
that I get my irrigation,
and mostly my irrigation timing, under control.
The next problem that I've noticed in my garden
is the vigor of my seedling health.
And every great gardener knows
that in order to have a successful garden,
you need successful vegetable starts.
Whether they're direct sun or transplant,
you wanna make sure that they have everything they need
to have a successful growth.
And what I have here
is a very kinda sad, unsuccessful growth.
You'll see that the state of this whole seedling area
in general is quite dire.
But what I want to show you here is this.
You can see that that seedling is bone dry.
And the reason why
is that when I put the seedling bench here,
back in the summer,
it was fantastic for my peppers and tomatoes.
It got full sun, they were loving it, growing great.
But now, as I've gotten into winter,
I've noticed that this is basically
the coldest part of my yard, and I have frost damage.
And not only do I have frost damage,
but I have wind that's really dry.
That's blowing in right through here
with nothing to stop it.
So what's happened
is that no matter how often I water these,
I just can't keep the water in there.
It's just simply too windy, too dry.
So what I'm going to do to solve this problem
is look around my garden,
think about where is the most protected area
for my seedlings that still gets sun.
And, you know, I don't want it to be totally windproof,
but I can't just have the wind whipping through here,
evaporating all the moisture constantly.
So I'm gonna be moving the seedling area
to an area over there.
And actually, I might be cooking up
a special kind of ultimate seedling bench
to solve this problem, regardless of where they are.
But that's the problem here,
is being observant in your area,
making sure that you're best utilizing
the different parts of your yard.
In this case,
this is not the best place for my seedlings.
The next thing I wanna work on this year
is making sure I give all my plants the space they need.
So here I have cabbages and cauliflower.
With the cabbage, I went 18 inches,
and the cauliflower, I went 24.
And the reason why I wanna make sure
I give them enough space
is that the more space you give a plant,
the better chance is that it's gonna be healthy.
Now, there is this idea of biointensive,
where you wanna grow things to the point
where their leaves touch,
which is pretty much what this is doing,
but if you overdo it,
then you're gonna make these plants fight
for the same water nutrients
that they would otherwise get if they were by themselves.
So things to consider about spacing is,
doing close spacing isn't necessarily a bad thing.
For instance, if I do these two cabbages 18 inches apart,
I might get two smaller heads of cabbages.
If I space them 36 inches apart,
I would get two larger cabbages.
And that's because they have more room to grow,
so they're gonna end up being bigger in the end.
Now, that might be nice if you want a big cabbage,
but if you're wanting a lot of smaller cabbages
throughout the season,
then it's better to go a little tighter.
But for tomatoes this year,
I'm giving them as much space I possibly can.
I usually do 18 inches,
because I wanna cram in
every single tomato I can possibly get.
But this year,
I'm gonna go 24 to 30 inches between each tomato,
because I wanna try to give less disease pressure.
And I want to give them more opportunity
to get the nutrients that they need.
So I'm hoping that I might have less plants this year,
but I'll have a better harvest
and a healthier plant overall.
So that's the tip for this one,
is give your plants more spacing,
see if they give you more in return.
So there you have it.
Those are some of the major issues
that I've noticed in my garden this year.
I hope that some of these
are elucidating for you guys as well.
Maybe you've run into similar issues
and are trying to troubleshoot it,
but it's really comes down to making observations
in your garden.
And those observations vary from season to season.
So while something might have worked really well
in the spring or summer,
it might not work in a different part of the year.
So always keep eye around your garden.
Try to think about different ways
you could utilize different spaces.
And actually this wonderful Pride of Madeira here.
As much as I love it,
I'm actually gonna be ripping this one out
because this is also blocking all the sun
from that cabbage patch I showed you guys earlier.
Luckily I have tons of Pride of Madeira around,
but with that, I hope you guys enjoy the video.
I hope you guys pick something up,
and you might have noticed
that I've had a severe slowdown in video output,
but this is part of the ramp up.
I'm going to be producing a lot more videos
in these next coming months,
especially as we get into spring.
My time is freed,
and I'm now about to dive back into the garden.
(mellow acoustic music)