(both laughing)
- We're back again, Jacques.
- Yeah.
- With what in your hand?
- Another avocado.
This is the third time we've tried to plant avocados.
This is the fruit tree frenzy.
(cheeky music)
So I got grapes in my hand, Jacques.
Actually I have four flame grapes.
One of the better varieties to grow in SoCal.
- Yeah. - But you've got avocado,
and I've got another one here.
If you're a longtime follower, you'll know.
We tried to plant one over there.
Then we put a pond in.
We moved them to here.
We said a couple prayers.
We said a couple chants. - Yeah, it didn't work.
They didn't hear those prayers.
They died real quick.
And avocados notoriously, it's like,
if they take, they're in,
but it can take a few times.
And I've heard this from experienced growers as well.
- I think we've learned that it's basically
all about the soil,
and we haven't been respecting that rule.
- Not at all. - We keep pretending
like this is the perfect soil for avocado.
(Kevin laughing) It's not.
- Here's what we have to do today.
We have our grapes,
which are gonna go - It's not gonna stay?
- in this area right here, right behind us,
The avocados we're gonna take over to this corner,
throw a little height in.
There's actually four different types
of fences and other houses on a slope there.
So I think let's block that, right?
Let's like block it in.
Give a little bit of a natural environment.
And Jacques, we've got this one
over here to pollinate. - Look at this.
This is what we're hoping for.
A nice giant avocado to hide everything over there.
- Exactly. - And yeah,
plenty of pollination.
- Plenty of pollination.
And then we do have a bit of a project.
Again, this is a gambling day.
This is a gambling day at the orchard,
because, - we're rolling the dice.
- we have the Cavendish banana over there
that we really haven't gotten much out of.
It propagates itself a lot.
It does not produce a lot.
And my understanding is in San Diego,
I really need to be blasting that in full sun.
Keeping the soil - Oh, okay.
- really moist though. - Gotcha.
- At the same time.
So that's what I think we're missing.
- Okay. - We have that,
and a friend sent me a blue Java banana.
- And that one looks good.
- I'm gonna try to kind of guild those together.
Create a little little grove if you will,
and see what we can do,
honestly. - Yeah, 'cause
that'd be amazing to get some
homegrown bananas, so. - And then we got
a little treat in the greenhouse
that we're gonna get out later. But let's just do a layout.
So I've got the Hass, and you got the Fuerte.
- Yeah, and I got this weird sleeve thing.
It's like a plastic garbage bag basically.
That's perfectly fit, and it's bottomless.
I think that's gonna make transplanting easy.
- I think it'll be nice.
We're doing the same method as before.
I don't think our two in hole was necessarily the problem.
- No.
- I think it was just that we didn't respect the avocado.
So this is my thinking on placement.
Maybe a little further out this way.
Why? Because that gives us the opportunity
as this grows to kind of wander around on this side.
Pick avocados from here without having to go over the fence.
- Yeah. - But still does
block the fence.
And it depends really on
if we let this thing go crazy, I mean you'll get,
- It'll get huge. - A canopy like,
pretty damn big.
But it'll take years to get there.
Now, banana.
So let's hit the greenhouse.
So Blue Java,
- Blue Java's right here.
You got the lychee?
Yeah, little tropical plant here.
- So lychee size,
I don't really know off the top of my head.
I'd guess 10 to 15 feet.
The grapes can be spaced every six feet.
- Yeah. - And then we'll
build a trellis after the fact.
I basically means four panels' worth of grapes.
- So avocados are gonna take up the first panel,
and maybe part of the second.
- I would say at the very least through,
'cause you think sun's coming this way, right?
- Yeah. - So roughly
around 12 to 11, you'll start to have light
coming on that second panel for the first few years.
I'd say probably about here is what I'm comfortable with.
I'm also comfortable with keeping it
off the wall about this much.
- Right. - Because they're gonna
come up and go over, - and they're gonna try
to lean some way.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Plus I don't really wanna move that right now,
to be honest, so.
- I'm fine with that.
- What that then means is
that I think that means the lychee can go right here-ish.
- Okay. - Right?
- Are we gonna put the bananas like next to each other?
Or like a little distance?
- I need to double check spacing,
'cause I think what we did wrong over there
is not sacrifice those pups early enough.
And just let one go. - Okay.
- So if we're gonna now plant two next to each other,
just exacerbate that problem, you know?
- Yeah. - What that unlocks though,
Jacques, is I believe you can take
one, two, three, four,
just kind of goes kinda long down there.
You know? - I feel like
we probably wanna center it on the panel,
and let it go three feet either way.
- Let's pick our best three,
which I think are actually those three.
This one's not. - Yeah.
And all three are flame seedless, right?
Yeah, same exact grape.
- So do we wanna keep these in like some sort of line,
or do we wanna just kind of ease into the grapes,
and that'll be the tightest line?
The grapes should definitely be the tightest,
'cause it's really canopy, right?
And the grapes aren't gonna have
much of a canopy whatsoever.
So the grapes can be quite tight to the wall.
And we can run this pretty tight.
To me this looks pretty solid.
- Yeah. - You know,
and then of course,
as we see how this stuff expresses itself,
over at least maybe a year's worth of growth,
I think that's when you come in and you say,
I can actually throw some shrubs here.
Or I can throw some
ornamentals here. - Yeah, air planting,
- fill it out a little bit.
Because what you'll want to do
especially with the lychee and the banana, is create,
try to create a subtropical undergrowth.
- Yeah. - I would imagine, right?
Yeah, gotta start somewhere.
Dig up banana, or? - I'm gonna
take off these SoCal slippers,
and get into some real stuff.
So let's get some shovels, Jacques.
- All right.
- We need to make sure we do it right this time.
We're still gonna go
the two in one hole. - Yep.
- But we're gonna do a mound
about a foot tall, about three feet wide.
We're gonna build it up with some native soil
but also this top soil, (soil bag flatulating)
but also this topsoil plus product
that we got from the local nursery.
Why?
- Because this has sandy loam in it.
So instead of being a potting mix,
which is like all organic materials
that will eventually rot over time and disappear,
the sandy loam will always be there.
So it's not gonna create a huge cavity as the soil ages.
And that's really the problem.
We wanna make something that's going to last,
and stick around for the lifetime of the avocado.
- Yep.
- So we do need to dig at least somewhat,
- I would say a decent amount.
- Because that's pretty deep.
- This one's deep, and I don't want to break this up at all.
I want it to go
right in as a slug, you know? - Yeah, right in.
I think that's another thing with avocados,
is that they don't seem to like their roots
to be that disturbed.
(chill lo-fi music)
- Ooh, that's a little anaerobic, smell that.
- Oh wow, oof.
Don't want small vision for that one.
- That's a little stinker
right there. - I came in
a little too deep on that sniff.
- Also, Jacques, take a look.
If I'm on a stake, I'm throwing the stake on the north side.
Protects most of the, or sorry,
the south side. - Oh yeah, yeah.
- Protects that from the sun most of the day.
- Yeah. - Which is great.
- So you don't have to paint it.
- My only worry is that that bottom is so anaerobic.
I'm wondering do I scratch it a little bit?
- Mm. - You know?
I'm gonna do a little bit just because it's
something to do. - Yeah, those roots
are probably dead anyway.
- Yeah. And it smells, - It's pretty bad.
literally like ass.
- That's actually what it smells like.
- Yeah. So in you go. - That looks so funny.
That looks like good soil though.
- That looks pretty solid.
So let's go like this.
I'm so like within me, it's so hard to resist like,
- Doing something? - taking that set.
I actually am gonna do it light,
light, light. - All right, all right.
- I'm not gonna scrape it open at all,
but I just want that sheer wall to be slightly broken.
Oh, whoa, this is cool.
Check this out.
- Hmm?
- It's one of those graphs where they cut a V.
- Oh shoot.
- You can actually see the scarring heel.
- Yeah, they split it open, huh.
Normally it's not that kind of grass.
- No, that's interesting.
- That's really cool.
The whole reason by the way that we're mounting it up here
is because avos, in this heavy of clay,
they just would rather not.
They'd rather have a little bit of an easier time
than we're trying to give them.
So that's why we're doing it this way.
- Not the most even looking mound.
- No, it is not.
- But it is a mound.
Okay, I mean that looks pretty good to me.
- Yeah. - So now,
it's the great banana experiment.
Let's go see what we can do here.
- We basically just start carving?
- I think so.
- I think come in,
- Make like a carve out?
- I mean, are you hearing some cutting?
- I'm feeling something.
- I'm definitely feeling something.
All right, should we try?
- Yeah.
- Actually, you know what?
I'll come on this side, cause I got more heft on that.
- All right, so I'm gonna go in at an angle now.
- Yep. - And just pop it.
All right.
Ooh, okay. - Okay.
- There we go. - I mean, that's not
even that bad.
- That was actually pretty easy.
All right, now we just gotta carry this boy.
Here we go, let's put it offset.
- [Jacques] All right.
So we gotta start digging.
- I'll go get that other shovel.
- So spacing wise on the banana,
I think what I'll do here is we'll bring it off the avocado.
So we'll bring it about here or so,
we'll just plant these two relatively close to one another.
I think roughly bananas want to grow
like in groups of two, three or so.
'Cause they obviously propagate themselves
quite prolifically.
Normally if you're planting like a bunch,
you'd space 'em out about six feet or so between clusters.
But in this case,
I think we just go in like roughly right here, Jacques.
- So that'll be one,
and two? - You go one, two.
Let's kick this over just slightly.
- All right. - So I'll just dig my hole
like right about here.
- And then,
- Let's just plant both in this panel width.
(chill lo-fi music)
Look at that.
- Nice.
- Nice roots. - Roots look good.
- Nice roots.
- [Jacques] Looks like they're using
a sandy kind of mix there.
- What I'll do is I'll drag this,
fit it in with most of these pups
coming out towards this side.
'Cause I'd much rather have them creep this way
than this way.
What do you think of the shape here?
I think I need to fill a little bit on this backside.
- Need a little back fill?
- You want to toss a little back in there?
Just a little bit of the normal mix.
Yeah.
Okay, I think that's, I feel comfortable with that.
- That's good. - Yeah, yeah.
- So these, maybe I'll make a little channel
so we could really flood it.
- I like that.
- Because what we'll do is probably put this on drip,
with a specific timer.
- [Jacques] Yeah.
- Because this is gonna be the only one that
wants to be drenched as much as it does, you know?
- Yeah, and from what I read
basically when you transplant a banana,
you wanna water it every day for like two weeks.
- Yeah, oh, sorry. - To like make sure
that it gets back together.
(chill lo-fi music)
- Let's start laying out those grapes.
- [Jacques] Yeah.
Now we got a little more room to work with.
Perfect. - My understanding
with grapes is just, put 'em in.
- Just put 'em in. - Put 'em in.
- They don't need anything.
- [Kevin] Nothing.
(chill lo-fi music)
- So I actually had my grapes
dug out by my dogs like three times.
And every time I just put it back in the ground,
and it kept growing.
So that's all I know about grapes is,
they really don't care.
Like they will find a way to set roots.
They will continue to grow and they will thrive.
So all I'm gonna do right now,
just 'cause I could see the slow growth here,
I'm gonna just go ahead and pinch that off.
It's not gonna do us any favors,
it's just too low on the plant.
So that's gonna give it a kind of cleaner starting point.
- This is where the strength and weakness of the long hose,
you start planting out an ecosystem,
you got too much to run over, you know?
- [Jacques] Yeah, that's true.
- So with this mound, I'm gonna wet it,
and actually move on to the bananas, and then come back.
'Cause like Jacques said, you don't want to erode the mound.
And this is a bit of a fortress right now,
hydrophobically speaking.
So we'll just hit it with that,
and then go.
Look at your strategy.
- Is it working?
- [Kevin] Yeah, look.
Okay, beautiful. - I can just do that,
move on. - And just let it soak.
- [Kevin] Yeah, that's nice.
- [Jacques] Easy.
That's called casual elegance.
- [Kevin] Casual elegance.
- All right, so we'll see how this comes out,
because like I said,
when we bought these, we bought 'em at the same place.
And I killed mine,
'cause I tried potting it up too early,
and I forgot that it was an air layer,
like we were just talking about.
So air layer just don't simply have
many roots to begin with,
and they take a while to get going, but, ooh
little bit anaerobic.
But there are plenty of roots,
and it actually looks healthy.
The roots aren't dead, they're not brown.
So I'm gonna just kind of scrape some of this stuff off.
This should actually do really well.
And then now we need to go find some soil, basically.
(funky music)
- Jacques, I think we've outdone ourselves today.
- It looks really good.
Four flame grapes in, trellis to come.
Let us know if you have a cool trellis idea
against this fence,
I'm really curious what you guys think.
I personally think I've never been more excited
about the bananas
than I am now. - Yeah, I know.
- They're getting sun all day long.
They're not blocked off like they would've been over there.
I don't know, the Jacques planting-hole method.
The donut planting hole. - It's a little infinity.
- Not bad, not bad. - I like that.
- Infinite potential, infinite success.
And then let us know in the comments
if you think we will win on attempt three on avocados.
For sure to me, this is the
best one yet. - Yeah.
- But, it's avocados, so.
- You never know. - You never really know.
- It looks good.
Like, I'm feeling it.
I'm feeling it.
- I'm feeling it.
All right guys, that's it for today.
Good luck in the garden, shop.epicgardening.com
for all of your gardening needs.
We'll see you on the next one.
Keep on growing.