Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have another exciting episode for you and this is going to be Growing Your Greens
in a minute, so short format video.
Anyways, today I'm in my garden, it's spring time as it is for many of you guys and spring
is a very busy time for me besides having to do my taxes and all this other stuff.
It's busy in the garden because this is the time you want to get planting and I know for
some of you guys the last frost date may happen sooner or later.
For me it happens actually sooner so as you guys can see I've gotten all my peppers planted
out.
I have a video linked down below on how I plant my peppers and what I enrich my beds
with.
But the challenge is on the other side this bed here which is a four foot by fifteen foot
bed, all the way down I still got lettuce.
So it's starting to bolt, and I've been basically eating like two heads a day.
I'll juice a head and then eat a head for dinner as fast as I can eat and I'll probably
start dehydrating some lettuce into lettuce chips instead of kale chips really soon also.
But the thing is as soon as this lettuce bed is done, I'm going to pull out this out and
then I'm going to replant it in the peppers.
So it's important whether you're starting your own seeds or sometimes buy plants like
I do, is to have them ready to go when you are ready.
The challenge I'm having at this point is I have all these six packs here that are being
put on clearance now at the local nursery because it's getting past our last planting
time that normal people plant at.
I mean, I still plant all the way into July, which not necessarily recommend it but I've
gotten away with it.
But you should plant as early as possible, don't plant too late especially when it gets
over 100 degrees, not advisable, although I've done this successfully and have techniques.
But anyways, if I kept my pepper plants in six plants they would basically get root bound
in here and it's not a good thing.
So let's go ahead and pop one of these guys out and see how it's looking out here if we
pop this out carefully.
Alright there we go look at that.
You guys can see that, I mean it's pretty good roots, it's not totally wrapped around
the bottom.
When they get like one big mass, that's not a good thing.
So this is actually at a good size to transplant up a pot size.
So I don't encourage you guys to transplant or up-pot or move on up to a bigger size until
they're ready.
Like if I pulled this and I like barely saw and roots sticking out of the dirt I wouldn't
even transplant them and actually I probably wouldn't even mess with then.
So then what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and move them on up into these
four inch round circular pots that I like a lot because I could stack them and they're
kind of like, I like them because they're long and tall and deep versus four inch square,
I don't know if I have any sitting around here on the ground.
But I have like four inch square pots that are like much shorter.
So I really, some of these roots really like to dig down and especially planting into some
of my beds with the AguaJet system.
I want the roots to be deep because then they'll have a higher probability of success, being
able to get that water that's going underground instead of just having roots that are going
in a couple four inches.
I really like these guys even if they're round and not square, so they don't hold quite the
volume of soil square-wise or volume wise but because they're deeper I find that a huge
benefit.
So I guess next let's go ahead and go over to my potting table and show you guys how
I pot these guys up.
So welcome to my potters bench.
Did you guys really expect me to have a potter's bench.
I'm not going to waste money on a stupid potter's bench or build one myself, especially when
space is at a premium for me in a small residential backyard.
I want to have the most space to grow food, not have a pottery bench.
So what I got instead, even better, it's a wheelbarrow.
It's multifunction, besides mixing your soil, besides hauling your soil, and hauling stuff,
I used it as my potter's bench.
So once I got my soil mixed up in here and I'm not going to go into how I mix this stuff
up, the link down below to the video where I have how I planted out my pepper bed.
It has a link on how I mix up this batch.
I pretty much do a similar mixture for topping off my raised beds as I do with up-planting
or my plants except that I add a little bit more of the perlite and the coconut coyer
so it drains but also retains more moisture.
This is very important if you have friends watering where they may tend to over water.
So I don't want the water to hang out too long in there, but I don't want it to drain
out like if I planted it in sand either.
I have a very nutritious mix including things like several kinds of composts, different
kinds of rock dusts that add up to ninety different trace minerals which are very important
for plan health.
As well as beneficial soil microorganisms, bacteria and fungi in this mixture from the
worm castings.
I use worm gold plus worm castings in this mixture.
Soil humates which also add some trace minerals.
I mean, its' a really wide spectrum mix.
Now you guys don't need to do this, the reason why I do this specifically is because I want
to have and grow the highest quality plants and give them everything they potentially
might need in a soil mix and they get to select what they want to uptake.
But if it's not in there they're not going to uptake it, right?
So I'm just giving them a whole spectrum.
So in any case, let's go ahead and get into transplanting.
So what I do is I take one of these guys which is actually what holds these nice little pots
that I have, the four inch pots.
I put this on this side of my bench, my wheelbarrow and then over of this side I take like a six
pack of the ones that I need to transplant, got poblanos there and then I have this little
shaker bottle.
This shaker bottle sometimes we fill it with different things like mycroyza fungi and a
wide spectrum of mycorrhiza fungi, beneficial bacteria, seaweed powder, Aquasap seaweed
powder that's really good to help root growth.
That's what I normally have in here for planting out plants but to do transplanting I'll also
have a little bit of the Dr. Earths' vegetable fertilizer mixed in.
I'll about maybe one quarter ratio approximately, maybe a little bit less of the Aguasap.
So what we're going to do is I first take one of these guys and I just scoop it in,
maybe about half way, not super far up.
Then I'll go over to one of these guys and man this guy's like really curving, we'll
try to get a straight one.
I'll take one of these guys out, squeeze them on out very carefully and check out his roots.
His roots are not bound up, if they were I'd probably try to like just tease them out a
little bit, not breaking them.
If they're bound up I'll try to maybe break them, but these guys are at a good time to
be transplanting because they're kind of popping out of the block here of the soil, but they're
trying to hit the wall, but they want to go further so I just tease them on out like that
and I take a little shaker and just shake a little bit and I do that over my soil so
if any drops in that's going to into the next plants.
Then I'll go ahead and put this and kind of hold it at the level I want it, maybe center
it up and then I'll just dump in soil on top.
Then I'll shake this down a little bit, use my fingers to pop soil in there, get it compressed.
But we don't want to like pack it there like don't sit there and tamp it down and try to
get the most soil in there.
The roots grow through the spaces in-between the soil, not into the soil right.
So we want it light and airy.
So I also tried to make a nice airy mixture, a little bit more airy mixture than a heavy
mixture I would use in my beds.
Once we do that, we got them in the pot then we go to that side.
I'm going to go ahead and continue on until I got the whole thing finished and if I think
of anything else to share with you guys I'll come back and tell you.
So I'm about halfway done potting up my plants.
As you guys can see I got a whole sixteen pack full and I like how these are really
easy to move around.
Basically after I'm done with one set, I just have some buckets upside down to kind of set
them on behind me.
We'll kind of set them out the way for now.
Then we'll get the next rack in place and ready to do more.
So now I want to share with you guys a few things that I thought about as I was potting
up my plants.
First thing is you want to do this in the shade.
The baby plants are actually quite sensitive and you don't want to this in full sun for
your health because you don't get sunburned and for the plants health.
Do it in the shade.
I'm in a corner of my yard where I have just things in storage and I have a nice shade
tree here and I'm just kind of in relaxing in the shade and a nice breeze.
Number two, you want to have the transplants not super dry but not sopping wet either.
You want them a nice moisture level so you can play with the roots a little bit.
Of course once you do transplant them out you will want to water them when you're done.
Now the third thing is you want to disturb the roots as little as possible.
My analogy for this is I personally like longer hair on girls, I don't know why that is, maybe
it's because that's just what's traditional.
You can call me traditional I suppose.
But my girlfriend kind of wants to have shorter hair.
So we kind of talked about it and she went in and she got her hair cut and they took
off a lot but it really didn't look too much different because they kind of just thinned
out.
It was still the same length maybe shorter by an inch.
But they rarely mess with it so that when I see her I'm like oh yeah I love long hair
and she looks beautiful and I can't rarely it's changed.
She's happier too because it lightens the load up because I guess hair can get heavy.
So that was a good thing but same thing with the plants roots right?
You want to disturb them enough so that they could spread out and put new roots but you
don't want to totally disturb them.
That can cause transplant shock and shock the plants too much.
It's like if she cut her hair bald and came home I'd be like what'd you do?
It's too much man, you got to just go a little bit at a time a lot of things in life.
Anyways I'm going to go ahead and get to transplanting this last flat out and then we're going to
come back to you and show you what I'm going to do with these transplants which is actually
pretty cool.
Alright so I got all these guys moved up and once I got them all moved up we're going to
move them into their home until they're ready to get planted.
Where I'm moving to, I could move them to my greenhouse, but I want these guys to grow,
baby, grow right.
If they're in my greenhouses they don't get as much sun.
So what've done is I've set up a set up here in a sunny area which actually assimilates
actually the bed they'll be planted in, it's actually right next to it.
So it's going to get about the same amount of sun so they could get hardened off.
Now my plants have always been in the sun, but if you're, this is very important if you're
bringing them in from inside to the outside.
Don't just put them in full sun immediately, right.
Maybe bring them out in the sun for a couple hours each day and then bring them back inside
and as the days go on increase the time in the sun and decrease the time inside until
you just leave the outside all the time.
They need to kind of adjust to their new growing environment.
Now since these guys have always been growing out in full sun, I'm just putting them right
out here and what I'm doing here actually is I'm growing them in this big, in a container
but then in another big container and what this is, this is a four foot by eight foot
hydroponics flood tray.
You might be thinking, John why do you do that?
Why do you need to do that?
Well you don't really need to do this, but I want to do this because I want to be resourceful
with the earth's resources, one of which is actually water.
It's a very valuable resource and we are running out of fresh water.
I know there's those of you guys that'll say oh yeah, we can't run out of water because
it just keeps circulating around.
But wells and water tables are getting lower as we're using it faster and it's not like
circulating as quick as it could be.
But anyways, I'm doing my part to save water.
So instead of just having these sit up and water these guys and then the excess water
drains down onto the ground and evaporates which is good because it kind of like, that
cycles right so it's not really wasting it.
What I'm doing instead I put it in this big four foot by eight foot flood tray and I water.
When I water this little stand here, the tray's that I've put it in has little fake bottoms
so the water drains down to the bottom.
Then I have this thing sloped down and then all to this end and then on this end, I basically
on the bottom there's a hole and then I have a bucket to collect all the water that is
overwatered that is not needed.
Then I can take that bucket and then water my other plants.
So now I'm getting any kind of leach lew that may becoming out, any nutrients, minerals,
microbes all get in the bucket then I'll feed my other potted plants with that water to
conserve nature's number one resource.
The best way to do it if I caught rain water off my roof, use that to water this and then
used the bucket to water other stuff or one of the things I'll be doing in the future
is setting up a simple flood and drain table, so I'll look this up to the bucket of the
bottom where it'll drain out and then I'll hook up a pump in there and the pump will
basically pump the water back in here to a certain level and then it'll basically water
from the bottom, all the plant roots will absorb the water from the bottom and then
drain all that out.
This is a simple hydroponic set up that I'm using just to keep my baby plants alive until
they're planted into the raised beds behind me.
I know flood tables can get quite expensive, I just recently got two.
I got this eight foot by eight foot, it's kind of jacked up on one side, got cracks
and stuff but it still hold the water no problem and it was twenty bucks on craigslist.
These guys are like, I don't know, a hundred bucks and I got a four foot by four foot flood
table actually even in better shape than this guy, mint condition practically for twenty
bucks also, right.
If you guys enjoy this short format hey please give me a thumbs up to let me know.
Also be sure to click the subscribe button right down below to be notified of new and
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Be sure to check out my past episodes, I have nearly 1200 episodes now, teaching you guys
all aspects of gardening so you guys can be successful at growing your own food at home
from all the tips I've learned over all these years.
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 John Kohler from growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have another exciting episode for you and today I'm out in the backyard garden,
as you guys can see some things are growing really great, my lettuce, like I got to start
ramp up the harvest.