One of the most rewarding aspects of gardening, that I found, are the lasting
relationships I've developed with gardeners online. And one of those very
special relationships is with Jacq Davis in Phoenix. Now, Jacq is the one that
introduced me to all of the gardener's that I have shot videos at their gardens
in Phoenix, so check out my Phoenix playlist. One of the most frustrating
things about having a small garden is when those wonderful friends send you
seeds and you have nowhere to plant them. I already know what's in this envelope
and if it were anything but melon and cucumber seeds, I would just wait till
next year, because we're already in the end of July. But, I was already sad that I
was not going to have any cucumbers and melons this year, so I had an idea.
"Hope you feel better soon," aww. Now that's the thing, today Jacq and I were supposed to
be at the California Rare Fruit Growers Festival of Fruit in Campbell, California,
and we had a whole four days planned up there. We were going to tour big and
small, public and private gardens, and
hear speakers, and have wonderful food, and fruit, and because of my back, I had
to cancel. Ironically, my back started feeling better on Thursday and we were
supposed to fly out on Wednesday. At any rate, to honor my friendship with Jacq, I
am going to plant some seeds today when we would have been together anyway. One
of the challenges when you grow Back to Eden with wood chips in your raised
beds is, it's hard to direct sow seeds and seedlings, because the woodchips
displace and they fall back over and they don't germinate or they don't take
off. But, I just had an idea. I have had these sitting around since 2012 or 13.
Now I used these - I found this online like you find out everything - and you
cut off the bottoms of nursery pots or yogurt cups or whatever, and you work
these into the ground, and then you plant your seedlings or seeds in here, and the
cutworm, which lives right under the surface of the soil, will not invade this
in order to cut down your seedlings. So this was very effective for me and I
just hadn't used them in a while, and hadn't thought about it. But, I thought these
would work great with woodchips, because I can pull the woodchips back, work these
into the soil, you keep two inches above the surface and two inches below the
surface, and then you plant your seeds or seedlings in
here, and it will keep the wood chips back, and it will also keep the cutworm
back. Since I have some space in my Back 40 where my tomatoes did not thrive, I'm
going to plant a few of these today. I'm going to plant them in between the
tomatoes, because there's a lot of space that's not being utilized on this big
trellis. First of all, let's check out these seeds.
So, here we go.
I just put in some slow-release organic fertilizer and azomite minerals and
coffee grounds in here and I put a couple of spoonfuls on there and then
I'm gonna sink the seeds in there after I water.
This reminds me of making mud pies when I was kid. Hope I didn't get that too
muddy. I'm just gonna put the seeds about a half an inch down.
Just for insurance purposes, I'm going to put four seeds in each pot,
and hope I get one.
Okay, that's one.
Now, I've been wanting to grow a Kajari melon for years and I've tried a few
times without success, so we shall see if this is the lucky, lucky one. Kind of
doing this quickly at the end of the day.
Number two.
We'll check in with these in a few days and see how they do. There's one anyway. I
I put four seeds in each ring. These are the cucumbers on this side. There's one
Let's check the melons.
Don't see anything on the melons. Thanks so much for watching this channel and if
you enjoyed this video, maybe you'll enjoy these. You see that face up there,
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that would help a lot. Thanks for watching, see you next time.