Before we can get started this year you might have noticed that our
garden area has been overrun with weeds.
But I think I have a pretty creative solution that should be able to get rid of the bulk of them.
(Jet engine fuel burning flame thrower sounds)
Well, it was worth a shot. I'm starting to think it would just be faster to
pull them up by hand....old school. So I decided to bring out the experts. You
probably remember this little guy. Let's see what they say about the weeding.
-[Cambry] Yeah, what we should have done a couple weeks ago
was spray the weeds. I know, I lost my voice.
-Yeah.
-We should have sprayed the weeds a couple weeks ago and let them die that way. But it's too late
now, so we're going to spray the ground with some water, get the soil loose, and rip them all out.
-All part of the process. You ready dude?
If you remember, I built this accessible garden for my wife about 3 years ago,
but with the amount of weeds surrounding the raised flower beds, it has become
inaccessible which is why the weeds have to go. Maybe later this year we'll add some pavers or
something to keep the weeds from ever coming back. But for right now we are picking them by hand.
Now with all the weeds gone, Cambry, do you remember how to do it?
-Let's get started.
-Your voice!
[Intro]
Before we get to planting, let's catch up a little bit with what happened
over the winter. We have good news and bad news.
-The good news is is that most of our fruit trees lived.
One of them died, but five are still alive and we got a second Pluto tree.
-So that is currently planted and it happens sometimes when you replant a tree,
or transplant it I guess, it doesn't quite make it. And we were expecting
that. The bad news is is that my watering system didn't make it through the year.
If you remember, we have a rain collection system that takes all of the water we get
off of our roof and fills a giant plastic tank. Kind of like a water tower. And I used it most
of the winter to keep the horses water buckets full, but around mid-December is when it froze.
And I tried twisting one of the valves and it snapped off, rendering it entirely
useless because I couldn't fix the valve without taking off the manifold, and where water would
go everywhere which isn't something you want in the winter. So since that's broken I have
completely drained the tank and I'm going to redo the entire watering system this year.
But that's all part of the fun...learning, improving, progressing,
and the next watering system is going to be way cooler than the previous one.
-One of the reasons we have a garden is because it's fun,
and also because we get to eat healthy, fresh food.
-But that comes later in the year when we harvest. One way we can eat healthy and fresh right now is
with HelloFresh. Huge thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring this video. I like that HelloFresh is
the first totally carbon neutral meal kit company where nearly all the packaging is recyclable,
with thick insulated cardboard walls, ice packs, and fresh veggies delivered straight to our door.
-We're going to cook the presto pesto panko chicken. Wow, that's a tongue twister.
Hopefully it looks half as good as this when we're done.
-HelloFresh says their meals cut down on food waste by at least 25%
when compared to grocery shopping, since the exact amounts are already pre-proportioned
meaning there is less to throw away when we're done.
-I like the recipes are easy to follow and all ready to go. With less preparation there's also
less cleanup which is always nice. HelloFresh is 72% cheaper than dining at a restaurant.
It's also nice that I don't have to go to the grocery store and there's more than 50 weekly
options to choose from. Plus, I like that it makes me cook outside my comfort zone.
It gives me more confidence while cooking, and a larger variety of food in our diet.
-So all in all, it took us about 30-45 minutes,
but it was fun. It was fun to cook together. What do you think?
-It's really good. It's better than what we had at a restaurant last night. So, I'm sold.
-And way cheaper. I'll leave a link down in the description.
HelloFresh.com and use code JerryRig16 for up to 16 free meals and three free
gifts. And there's no long term commitments or contracts – just how we like it.
-Go to HelloFresh.com and use code JerryRig16 for up to 16 free meals.
-Now let's get back to growing our own vegetables.
You might have noticed that our planter boxes have settled a bit, meaning I do
have to buy some more dirt or topsoil to fill the boxes back up to the level they used to
be at. It needs to be a special kind of top soil because that's what is most nutritious for plants.
It is annoying though because I am paying money for dirt.
-Is this what they mean by a ghost pepper?
-Wow.
-Would you like this jalapeno?
-No I would not.
One way we can avoid buying dirt in the future is by doing something called composting.
-Composting is when we take biodegradable stuff like food scraps, leaves, grass clippings,
or other organic material and let it slowly decompose into nutrient rich soil.
-It's like really good dirt for free made from stuff that we're going to throw away anyway.
Less stuff in landfills and better for our garden.
We could, of course, put a compost pile anywhere where we just put it on the
ground and turn it with shovels to oxygenate it which speeds up the composting process.
But we have this guy here which spins around and is a little more accessible.
-It kind of reminds me of rotisserie chicken.
-Except for food scraps.
One of the ways we're going to make this composting thing more interesting is with a
long term summer long experiment with different compostable items. “Compostable.” We have these
bags that I send out my Jerry Rig shirts in, along with these eco enclosed paper mailers. Curious
to see how those hold up in a composter. We have plant based multipurpose sponges made from coconut
husks and wood fibers. That will be interesting. We have paper plates made from sugar cane,
along with 100% disposable wooden cutlery. Plastic cups made with “plants” that are compostable,
as well as the toothbrush that I've been using for the last 6 months made out of wood.
So some of these things are supposed to be commercially composted, which is like
a giant composting facility, but it'll still be interesting to see how they hold up after
a few months in our garden. Alright Cambry, what are your predictions with all of these?
-I think after 5 months most of this is going to look exactly the same except for, I think,
this plate and this bag are going to be somewhat decomposed. But the rest I
think are going to be almost the same. This for sure is going to be exactly the same.
-We have the Red Solo cup as our control group because plastic takes
hundreds of years to biodegrade, while the rest of these things should disappear or
be mostly gone by the time we harvest the garden this fall. Personally, I'm going to
be optimistic and say most of it is going to be 75% gone. Are we going to bet anything on this?
-What do you want to bet?
-I don't know. We'll think about the bet. And of course, we start the composting with
some dead fruit. And we'll be adding our food scraps to this as the summer goes along. The
wooden toothbrush that I've been using obliviously is made mostly of wood but it does still have
plastic bristles which I do have to take out because we don't want plastic in our garden.
Now the garden is prepped, the wind has died down,
and Jerry Jr. is sleeping, I think it's time to plant.
-I'm really excited for the pumpkins because we got some
fun white ones that just appeared last year. I'm excited for those.
-Yeah. And they're big too. What we did is we took the seeds out of the pumpkins
at the end of the year, put them in the refrigerator so it acted like “winter,”
and now we're going to plant them and see if they grow. It should be interesting.
-Something that's worked really well for us in the past is soaking our pumpkin
and our corn seeds before planting them. Just get
them ready to germinate. We're going to do one finger of watermelon as well.
-And I'm going to kind of repurpose the same watering system as last year, the drip system,
but I'm going to build something entirely new for the water supply. But I will cover
that in another video. Besides the pumpkins, my favorite plant from last year was the corn. So we
are planting quite a bit more corn this year, doing that whole side of the planter boxes.
-I'm excited for the basil.
-We have basil. We also have jalapenos again. We have zucchini.
-Potatoes. We're going to try tomatoes this year too,
so it should be really good. So I'm going to cut the potatoes so that there are
these eyes. There are a couple potential spots for it. I'm going to cut it and then plant those eyes.
Everything is planted.
-Yes it is.
-We did not use our secret soil this time.
-We did not.
-So it may not do as well. Crossing our fingers.
-Yeah, previously we used horse manure from the barn she worked at,
but this year we didn't. So we might end up with no garden. We've been doing this
for about 3 years now. The planter boxes are still holding up. They have not fallen apart.
And this year is a little more interesting because we have the compost going at the same time. So hit
that subscribe button if you haven't already, and we will see you in the fall for the harvest.
-Thanks a ton for watching. We'll see you around.
-And Cambry will have her voice back by then.