All right! This is John Kohler of GrowingYourGreens.com and today we have another exciting episode
for you and we’re coming at you from my backyard garden. Nice sunny day, nice and
hot actually, and what we’re doing in this episode is I’m explaining an alternative
to tilling your soil. You know I hear people renting rototillers and using tillers and
all that stuff and it makes me cringe man! I would not want to be underneath a rototiller
and get rototilled up man, that’s a horrible way to go. So, I’m a big fan of no-till
garden so what is no-till garden? Does that mean you never stick a shovel or a fork or
anything in the garden? Well, you know, I try to disturb my soil the least, that’s
the big thing about no-till garden. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to till but you’re
going to till as minimal as you possibly need to just to do the work that you need to without
disturbing the soil. “What’s the big problem with disturbing the soil, John?” You might
be thinking, well you know there’s complex life in the soil There’s bacteria, fungi,
different arthropods, and earthworms! All kinds of things living in soil and when you
till you’re disturbing their life you know? The analogy I like to give is actually say
you had robbers break into your house and they’re in your bedroom and they’re trying
to rip up your mattress, go through all your drawers, find that money hidden in that sock,
right? And then you get home and your house is ransacked! How do you feel about when your
house is ransacked? I mean your place is all discombobulated, everything’s out of place
right? And then it takes you some time to get everything back in order so that you can
continue in living your life. The same thing happens with the soil microbes in there I
mean you rototill man, you’re discombobulating them, you’re killing a bunch of them and
they’re going to be fragile man and they’re going to have to rebuild their colonies and
establish…and you’re probably ripping up earthworms and you’re disturbing all
this. And in my version of organic gardening, which is actually called biologic organic
gardening, which is different than just organic gardening. You know we really want to cultivate
the microbes and the life in the soil, that’s the most important thing by far, right?
So, what happened to me is I built these raised beds—you should check my other videos for
videos on that if I posted this yet I don’t know how this is going to go, the ordering
of all these videos I’ve been making lately—but what happened here is I built these raised
beds, they’re 2 blocks high, each block is 8 inches so it’s 16 inches total. I got
about one cubic yard of organic compost from a local company: A1 Organics that I actually
do not recommend at this point. They actually made me take a video down because I didn’t
have “approval” or something from the President CEO of the company and I have challenges
with people that want to limit the information, man. And I think you know, that’s not too
cool! So, anyways—and the composts stink! Anyways, and I provided a realistic video
of the whole process and I just tell it like it is and I tell it how I see it, you know
kind of keep it real, and evidently they didn’t like the realness of it. I mean the only things
I could think of is that I mentioned that the composts stink, number one. I mentioned
number two, that the compost may be cut with sand and I don’t know if that’s true or
not cause I don’t know what they’re doing but it sure looked like it for me cause it’s
pretty sandy and I’ve checked out a lot of compost in my day and age. In any case,
I had this stuff stored in garbage cans, a whole yard’s worth, and I dumped it in these
raised beds you see behind me here and that makes up like the first couple inches, right?
Because that stuff stinks so much I had to ferry it over and put stuff on top of it so
I wouldn’t get the fumes, so I wouldn’t have to smell that stanky compost, right?
Compost should have a neutral smell when you buy it like I probably shouldn’t have bought
that compost but I was so excited about a place making a predominantly plant-based compost
here in Los Vegas, you know I looked aside and figured oh I’m going to try this stuff.
So, anyways I buried that stuff underneath and on top what you’re seeing here is some
gardening soil blend that my friend gave me when she moved out of her place. So, that’s
been sitting in piles in my yard unused for about a year. I haven’t been tending to
them, nothing’s been planted in them, they weren’t getting any water, so then basically
a soil dries out and it becomes like a sand, man. You know it doesn’t look super “lifeful,”
it’s kind of gray not that dark, rich, black, loam that we’re looking for like in the
middle of a forest and what not. And that’s the situation here so what I want to do is
I want to help you know, ignite the fire you know? Just cause you have wood doesn’t mean
you have a fire, you gotta have that spark and it ignites so in the same way I want to
ignite this soil full of the microbiology cause you know, just my garden intuition is
sensing that this is not super healthy soil in the sense of the biology in there, I don’t
think there’s a whole bunch. So, what we’re going to do today is actually
inoculate the soil with this stuff here it’s called the, “Penetrate Liquid Biotiller,”
and it penetrates the soil. This is made not only for sandy soils or soils that may not
have the bacteria but it’s also made for clay soils, if you’ve got a clay soil that
you can’t grow anything in…you know, the goal to make clay soil better is not to add
sand cause it still will harden up, right? What we need to do is we need to get the biologics
in there, that bacteria in there, the aerobic bacteria that’s basically going to breakdown
the organic matter in there create airspace and allow you to basically till the garden
using bacteria which are literally hundreds and thousands of workers in—what’s in
this package here that’s going to do the work for you. So, you don’t have to manually
do it, right? Isn’t it much smarter to get nature working on your side then having to
rent a rototiller and burn gas and you know work behind it. And yes this is not going
to work overnight and if you have clay soil, you put this stuff in, you’re not going
to come back in a day and say, “Oh yeah it’s tilled.” No, I mean nature doesn’t
work that way. Things take time to happen properly, you’re going to have to make probably
multiple applications, with each application your soil’s gonna loosen up and loosen up
and one day hopefully by—with also doing other good practices like adding rich organic
matter and trace minerals and growing some plant material and having fungus in there
and other things—your soil’s going to be autocorrect. I mean in nature’s system,
there is no waste and in nature’s system everything happens for a reason right? And
only when man gets involved and we try to do things to our system things don’t work
and in my opinion, rototilling is in our system but it’s not in nature’s system. There’s
not such thing as rototillers in nature. But, next thing’s let’s talk about how
this “Penetrates” works here. Let’s go ahead and open this guy up and inside this
is actually these little two bottles, bottle number A and bottle number B and a box that
you can compost. So, in bottle number A—the bottle number A is actually the food bottle
so these come separate you should not mix these together until you’re ready to use
them. This is for a very important reason. This is the food bottle, the food bottle contains
things like the kelp and the saponins that’s actually going to feed the bacteria once you
mix them together and it’s gonna enliven them. The bacteria in bottle number B, these
are the beneficial microbes including Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus licheniformis,
and I don’t know what those guys do but every different bacteria in this product has
a specific task you know they break down organic matter and the other thing to remember is
that the bacteria is the base of the food soil web.
So, what is a food soil web? Well, I have a nice little infographic here from John and
Bob’s and this is what the food soil web is to break it down. You have different things
in your soil such as the bacteria, the bacteria they fight pests and disease and you can see
a little oh I don’t know, a bacteria man here! Ha he’s looking like Batman. But they
fight pests and disease and they’re the base of the whole food soil web. They’re
what provides food for all the other things in the food soil web. After the bacteria,
you got the fungi and then, after the fungi you got the protozoa, and after protozoa you
got the nematodes, then you got the arthropods, then you got earthworms, right? All these
creatures in the soil have a big part to play and they need to be in balance in your soil
to have optimal growing success and have a healthy and vibrant garden. You know these
are the creatures in your soil that basically make compost, the nutrients in the compost
available for the plants. That’s why it’s so important to me to literally inoculate
the soil with this bacteria, so that they can get to work. They can start tilling my
soil and creating a live soil that’s gonna help actually break down the soil that I’m
going to pile on the top, eight inches of this stuff here. So, that’s why I’m using
the, “Penetrate Liquid Biotiller,” even though I don’t need to till it it’s going
to help provide aeration and inoculate it with the beneficial microbes that are, in
my opinion, so important. Now, another thing that’s really cool about
the “Penetrate” liquid here is that these are the same very microbes that are sold in
some organic fungicides so this product is only sold for use in the soil, right? But,
if you wanted to, like I will, you actually can also mix these guys and then spray it
on your leaves because you know one of the bottles actually has a good deal of kelp so
you can foil or feed it to your plants that way plus also provide that beneficial microbes
on your plants to help potentially knock out any diseases as well. So, I mean these are
the kinds of products we could use that we could spray on plants, you know they’re
non-toxic and they’re good for us and the soil—and you know if you have any pets—safe
for use around pets. So, what we’re gonna do next is actually just apply this stuff,
this is a 32 ounce pack for home gardeners, you’re definitely not gonna need these big
guys here. They have a smaller 8 ounce set that you’ll just combine both of them and
mix in basically a gallon of water or more water—doesn’t matter how much water you
need to use to distribute them all—and then distribute this and just spray it throughout
your garden. So, you could do this in a hose and sprayer like I’m gonna do here, I got
a Hudson hose and sprayer. You could do this in a pump sprayer and if you’re not really
that high tech you could also just put it in watering can and water it. You know the
hose and sprayer or a pump sprayer is probably more effective than just a watering can cause
you’d be able to get these guys and spread it all over your garden. And just once small
packet of the “Penetrate” will cover 1000 square feet and these large bottles cover
4000 square feet and I even have that here. Now, the cool thing to remember is that the
recommended amounts on the packets are the minimum amounts, right? To get results! I
always like to overdue things when the products I use don’t burn. This will not burn your
soil or anything like that so if you have a dilution or a little bit much of this stuff
on your garden that’s totally fine and the only negative is it might just cost you a
little extra money cause you’re using too much product.
So, what we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna go ahead and take this guy. Shake these
guys up a little bit. I’m gonna estimate how much 8 ounces is here. So, that looks
like it’s the bacteria oh and this one’s alive—we’re gonna go ahead and try to
go ahead and pour equal amounts of this stuff in my bottles. These are—it’s marked on
here for 8 ounces I think I’m halfway up there or so and if I look in my bottles here
it looks like I’ve about used even amounts so I think I’m good with that. Once again
if you get the smaller size just dump the whole bottle in. And all we’re gonna do
now is just screw on the top. These hose and sprayers are really simple and easy to use;
you can select the different patterns. I’m gonna use the rain pattern. The next thing
we’re gonna need to do is take the hose—and I am using filtered water, a Boogie Blue water
filter on it—you know if you are using conventional city tap water it does contain chlorine which
is for your health and sanitation so you don’t get E. coli or Cryptosporidium/Giardia outbreak
or something like that but it’s bad for your soil and bad for the bacteria. So, I
recommend you do get for your garden a Boogie Blue or other suitable garden filter to remove
the chlorine because the chlorine’s there to kill the bacteria and I’m here to make
the bacteria flourish so I do not want the chlorine. Okay so we just unscrewed my little
hose thing and we’re gonna put this guy here and screw it on. All right, so once you
got your sprayer all set up we’re ready to spray you just gotta set your dilution
ratio—unfortunately the dilution ratio on the packet is in ounces per gallon and on
the Hudson sprayer it’s actually in teaspoons or tablespoons per gallon so I’m actually
gonna set it to one tablespoon per gallon. Keep in mind that this amount of product will
treat 1000 square feet so if you get over your whole garden—basically go over your
whole garden then actually if you still have product left, start over again and keep spraying
the product down. It doesn’t matter if there’s actually more water than the product but what
does matter is that you get the product down there even if it is more diluted. You need
to get the quantity of microorganisms in your soil to be at a certain level to get the results
and that’s the results on the package—unfortunately this Hudson sprayer is not set up to go that
high. So, I’m just gonna go ahead and set it up to one tablespoon per galloon, turn
this guy on and water my garden until we run out of product. So, never before has it been
this easy to till your garden without renting a rototiller by just spraying on the beneficial
microbes that are going to do the work for me. If you’re interested in learning more
about this product be sure to click the link below this video that’ll take you to John
and Bob’s website. And if your order the product be sure to use the discount code that
I’ll actually put below the video to get a special low discounted price on this product.
I have been using the John and Bob’s products for several years now. I believe in them confidently
I mean they model my style of garden, which is fostering the beneficial microbes in the
soil which are really the workhorses so you can have free labor working for you without
paying anybody. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode once again my name is John Kohler,
gotta get back to tilling my garden. With GrowingYourGreens.com, we’ll see you next
time and remember keep on growing.