in today's video we're going to be replacing this old
low wooden raised bed with this brand new eight in one tall birdies bed
so before we actually get into the process of replacing this bed with that bed let's talk about
the reasons why i'm doing this the first kind of major reason is that this is very short maybe six
eight inches max and we want this to be an edible herb bed so at this height cats dogs you name it
can get in this bed do their business so that kind of ruins the edible aspect the other reason is we
wanted more space this bed's a little bit wider it's a lot deeper so it's not going to be mined by
trees around here and it's going to give us more growing space for these herbs the other reason why
we wanted it to be tall and prominent is because where i'm sitting is about i don't know 10 15 feet
to the door that goes right into the kitchen so the idea is that you open your back door
walk into your yard i want this bed to be full of herbs that i'm going to be using on a daily basis
so things like oregano dill basil thyme rosemary some trailing edible flowers like nasturtiums i
want it to look nice but i also want it to be full of the things that i want to use on a daily basis
so those are kind of the main reasons so now we could actually get into removing some of these
plants cleaning this area up and actually get into the process of installing this bed here
the plan is to fill this bed huge culture style and i'm going to actually be using a variety of
branches logs leaves compost that's not finished yet potting mix old straw all
sorts of stuff that i have laying around and so since i'm using a lot of that organic material
that isn't fully broken down it's going to be compressing and sinking in and settling a lot
so i don't want to fill this bed up today and then immediately plant right into it
so that's going to be on tuesday because on monday aka tomorrow we're going to be getting
apparently an inch to an inch and a half of rain so that's another reason to wait
the rain is going to compact the bed and help settle it very nicely so actually i need to
dig out both of these rosemaries and move them into pots so we'll do that right now
now we got all the plants out of the way i'm going to sweep up around it
and then we're going to just go ahead and lift this whole wooden bed right out
and drop that guy in and we'll talk about how to fill a bed you go culture style
so now the bed is placed and what you see in front of me here is a giant pile of logs and the way you
also see are some coffee bags i already started putting some in there but i wanted to show you
what my thought process was here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this coffee bag and i'm
going to set it up so that's sort of centered all right so now you could tell it's probably
looking very floppy so that's why i have these logs the logs are not just great for hugo culture
but they're going to be great for helping me set up this bottom because the logs are going to be
used to secure this burlap where i want it and it's also going to serve as a foundation for my
huge culture bed if you guys don't know what hugo culture is it is a old german sort of technique
of using detritus things like logs branches twigs things that you generate just in terms of
sort of maintenance around your land and your property and so what they did is they said okay
well we have all this witty material we don't want to plant right into it because we can't
but it is a very rich source of carbon it does a good job of retaining moisture
it brings lots of beneficial bugs things like that so that what they did is they make these
big rows where they stacked all these old logs leaves all sorts of organic matter
and then they just piled it in soil and by doing that what they do is they create this
wonderful sort of spongy bottom because this as these logs break down they'll become more spongy
and they'll be fantastic at actually retaining moisture the other thing that happens is they will
break down and form a very very rich nutritious soil for your garden bed so that's kind of
the most very basic principle of huge culture it's this idea of using all this organic waste
organic matter waste that you have around you to build better soil these logs are a mixture of
mulberry and jacaranda that are both from trees on my property that i've been trimming back this past
spring so what i'm going to do now is fill this entire layer with logs and then we'll talk about
what i'm going to do next now we're going to go ahead and start filling the soil just like i said
i'm going to be using a big shovel in combination with a little scoop
when you're filling a raised bed this is your best chance to get rid of all this old
like used potting mix from old grow bags that you don't want to amend
or maybe you bought some soil that didn't perform well just throw it in the bottom of the bed
this bottom has plenty of time to sort of mature and become enriched and what you really want to
do is focus the good stuff in that top 12 inches so now we're going to water to sort of help settle
all this soil that we've now added so what you're going to see me do now is dump in some mulch some
old potting bags that i really hated using but i just had laying around and some old compost bits
and bobs all sorts of things that i have kind of laying around my yard this is the best opportunity
to get rid of it these are chipped branches and really leafy branches from a tree that's over
my yard right there this was chipped about a week ago and it's been cooking in a pile ever since
it actually got up to 140 degrees entirely off the wood chip and leaf matter alone so this has
partially cooked again this isn't going to be a nice boon of nutrients but it is deep enough that
it doesn't matter what this will do is create a nice sort of habitat for beneficial bacterias
worms will dig through this and also it'll create a sort of sponge that's going to do
a really good job of retaining water one thing i like to mention is that as you fill a raised
bed no matter how you do it whether it's just soil or you are doing a huge culture make sure
you're watering maybe every fourth or a third of fill level because this is going to help settle
it's also going to make sure that bottom half of your bed is properly watered because once you fill
it up to here it's going to be really hard to sort of do that first watering unless you're doing it
in layers so i'm going to do that now help settle this in and then we're going to keep filling now
we're going in with the unfinished compost you can see that some of it is quite finished you
can see sometimes people put banana peel wrappers in there so let's go ahead and pull those out but
it's pretty gross it's something that i haven't really been turning so this is honestly more of
a cold compost than anything and you can see that i haven't been very efficient at it because a lot
of the straw is not broken down but again that's fine the straw is going to break down in the bed
we've got a pretty uh tasty looking bed here i'm about halfway full this is the point where i'm
going to stop adding unfinished material or at least material that's entirely unfinished
so no more tree branches no more wood chips no more leaves no more unfinished compost what i'm
gonna do now is drop a bag like it's a three cubic foot bag of soil conditioner which is generally
a it is like a broken down wood chip but it generally has more manures it has a lot
of beneficial bacterias and that's going to help sort of eat up this layer and then we're going to
start filling with soil so you can see that now it's starting to get really serious i'm adding
tons and tons of soil i'm looking around my yard for any random bags that i've been ignoring for a
long time i just found this old bag of sunshine mix which is just a peat best base formula i
bought this maybe a year ago and i just haven't wanted to use it at all so might as well use it
i have it i'm gonna go ahead and bury it in right now i gotta say this is looking really nice i'm
really happy with how this is turning out but i wanted to give you guys the final update for today
and that is that we are stopping filling right here so take a look at that it's after that first
ridge folds back in that's pretty much where we've left it and again we're leaving this here because
it's going to rain a bunch tonight and tomorrow and i don't want to fill it all the way i want
to let the rain settle it and then however much is left it's going to be my amendments so that's
where i'm going to add fertilizer i'm going to add compost and i'm going to add the last little layer
of potting or raised bed mix so we're going to leave it here and i'll see you guys in two days
as is often the case for san diego the rain was kind of a lie we did end up getting rain
but it was really like 0.6 maybe half an inch of rain but needless to say we got a little
bit of settling so i'll show you that right now this is where we are with the settling basically
it went from like here down to there so you know maybe one inch not as much as i thought
i guess i did a pretty good job of actually settling it in with the hose so now that we're
at this point i feel pretty confident that we're not going to have much more settling
and so now what i'm going to do is do the amendments and that top layer and we'll get some
plants in there i don't have everything i want to put in there but i do have a good chunk of it so
let's get into finishing this up before we finish filling this raised bed there is one last step i
think i've said that a few times now but this time it's for real uh last step is amending the bed and
what i have here is about three cups of the espoma biotone starter this is a good all-around starter
fertilizer mix i think the numbers are like four three three so it's pretty well balanced it also
has a lot of the beneficial bacterias that you want to put into your garden that will help your
plants grow so what i have is about three cups that's roughly how much they recommend for this
kind of square footage and since i'm already about i don't know four to six inches deep all i'm going
to do is surface scatter it and then bury it with soil there's no need to mix it in at this point
i don't want it any deeper at this point the roots will have some immediate access to it and as i
keep watering it those nutrients will percolate down so you don't want it too deep but you don't
want it too high up so now i just need to spread this out in an even layer all right that's in
and again i just broadcast it like this i don't want to mix it because if i mix it i'll probably
actually ruin the distribution the next thing i want to add is some azomite or volcanic rock dust
it doesn't have to first of all nothing i'm adding right now is actually like mandatory required
i just like to put in everything that i can to make sure that the plants have everything that
they need and that's why i use something like this rock dust it has this kind of reddish kind
of brown color and what this is is it's made out of a bunch of different volcanic minerals
and those minerals have a lot of these like little trace nutrients and elements
like random things like boron that you don't really think about or test for and honestly
most of the time you probably don't even need it but in this case when i'm doing these raised
beds i'm going to be putting in a lot of these perennial herbs i don't want to have to come in
here and correct anything so i want to make sure that i'm adding every possible nutrient that they
could need but again not required and just as a caveat you can't overdo it so like i said i put
three cups of the fertilizer because that's roughly what they recommend for this size
for the azomite i just kind of sprinkled in a little surface layer now that we have this
set that's pretty much all i want to add now we just need to add the soil and the compost
and actually that's what i have right here this wheelbarrow i already blended together a couple uh
different potting mixes with some fresh compost at the end what i'll probably do is i'll top it with
my homemade compost and then we're done so now i'm gonna just scoop this into here and
we'll get moving the bed is officially full and that means there's only one thing left to do and
that is to plant it in this bed like i mentioned before it's going to be annual and perennial herbs
the idea behind this bed is that it's things that we're going to be using on a more daily weekly
basis so things that are gonna we wanna put in drinks things we wanna put in a dish every night
stuff like parsley which if i put in the garden i guarantee you i'll forget about and i just won't
use so all that is gonna come front and center right here and it's going to be a nice mix of
colors textures smells flavors and it's going to just be very inspirational because i want to do a
lot more outdoor cooking this summer and having it all placed right here is going to make it
really easy to do that the moment of truth is here your bed is built filled and planted let's take a
couple minutes to talk about all the different herbs in here and how i plan to use them the
first one is barbecue rosemary it's our favorite rosemary we opted to put in the ground since it's
so large already but that was in the old bed so i wanted to mention it as we pop up into the bed i
have a lemongrass this was propagated from kevin's house so i'm looking forward to seeing this grow
it does clump and bunch but i find it very easy to manage so i'm not worried about that and then
i have some chamomile a wonderful tea herb and some calendula which is also a wonderful tea herb
this right here is one of my favorite smells in the garden hands down by far and that is tulsi
or holy basil it has such a sweet fragrant aroma even just from touching it here i could smell it
up to my nose so that's fantastic i use this all the time to put into teas it gives it a
very nice floral flavor and it's also really good in drinks cocktails anything like that
coming down we have a couple basils this is thai sweet basil so i'd grab a sprig of that and throw
it at the end of like a noodle stir-fry to give it some flavors reminiscent of thai cuisine which i
can't match but i will try to get close and then i have a dark opal purple basil so you could see
that the basil leaves on this one are very dark purple the idea for this is that it's more of
like a standard type of basil has the same kind of flavor profile but it looks really interesting
so if i had like a fresh grilled pizza and i was trying to finish it up i'll reach back here
grab a couple leaves throw it on top it'll add a lot of color contrast and as it starts to wilt
on the worm pizza it'll give it a lot of aroma so that's the idea with that one in the middle
here is a garden sage you can't go wrong with sage it's so savory and irreplaceable by any other herb
as you know it's a classic and fall it's a classic with potatoes pan fry it up and just eat it as a
garnish it's wonderful so having sage from center always recommend and now one herb that i don't
use very often and i'm not crazy about is parsley but by putting it in this bed it's going to force
me to reach for it more often if i had it in the garden sort of hidden away i tend to forget about
it so the idea is that by having it here i could grab parsley whenever i need it's a great thing
to just add into almost any dish it adds a sort of background flavor that you don't know is missing
until it's missing so that's why this is here i want it to be accessible and easy for me to
think about dill is a another wonderful classic herb i think a lot of people under utilize dill
it's really nice and like cucumber salads it's great mixed with yogurt it's great on like grilled
zucchinis there's so many wonderful uses for this herb and having it front center here means that
it's pretty much going to have no foliage by the time it flowers because i can almost guarantee you
we're going to pick this clean that's why i'm going to have more of them around but i wanted
at least one handy in this bed up front is my favorite time of all time which is lemon time so
that was a lot of time in one second but this is another one of these where i like to just touch it
whenever i'm walking around the garden and just breathe in that aroma it has this wonderful
sweet lemon scent with like that savory back tone of the time so the way i use this is i tend to
throw it on actually anything but it's wonderful in soups bean soups potato leek soup anything like
that where you want that lemony flavor without the acidity while still getting a ton of savory
thyme flavor i can't say enough about that one definitely try it if you haven't this bear patch
here is actually cilantro what i've done is i've sewn leisure cilantro from san diego seed
that is a slow bolt variety i've only sewn it in this front half because the idea is that
as that emerges i want to then succession so so as that's growing i'll plant some new ones
and then if that starts bolting or if i harvest it out i'll have some new cilantro on the way
that's why i didn't want to sew it all at once and that's something i highly recommend up front here
is another classic chives chives you could just chop up throw on top of anything great on eggs
great as a little finishing garnish on pretty much any dish and these sad guys over here are green
onions you can see in the video i split them up from a certain like one block and when you do that
they tend to look really sad at the start but i could almost certainly guarantee you that they
will bounce back so i'm not worried about that up front i have french tarragon i propagated
this back in june 6th from a clump i have growing out there french tarragon is one of these unique
herbs you don't see very often it has a very light licoricey and this kind of flavor but it's really
wonderful with eggs it sounds kind of weird as i just said it has a licoricey flavor but trust me
it's wonderful especially scrambled eggs it's also really nice in a potato salad i am still
trying to figure out more uses for it but it's also classically used in fish dishes that are kind
of more light and fragrant now up in the back here is a new thyme variety and that is pizza time and
it's true to its name it actually does smell a lot like pizza it's sort of a cross between oregano
and thyme and that's exactly what it smells like i haven't actually used this yet in the kitchen but
i'm definitely planning on reaching for this when i make some pizza in the future front and center
up here is a garden classic and that is pineapple sage i feel like a lot of people recommend growing
it but most people don't know how to use it i personally don't use it for cooking but i do use
it all the time for drinks cocktails fresh herb waters if you have like a little fizzy lemon water
throw some of those leaves in there and you'll add this wonderful pineappley scent to it if you just
touch the foliage and breathe it in immediately what you think of is pineapple so it's really
quite a unique herb and last but not least is the bulgarian honey garlic this actually
grows from bulbs i ordered it back in november i haven't cooked with it myself yet but the idea
is that it produces these flowers and you could pick these flowers off and throw them on like
a little flatbread at the end and it supposedly has this sweet garlicky kind of flavor so that's
what that is i'll let you guys know how that is once it's ready but that's what we're going for
here is an inspirational cooking herb bed as we get into summer we'll be hanging out out here a
lot more i'll be setting up the grill over here grilling up pizzas grilling up fresh vegetables
making recipes straight out of the garden and i guarantee you i'm going to be turning around and
reaching for herbs out of this herb bed so if you want to see how i actually cook out of the
garden and use these herbs in an inspirational way then stay tuned because summer is going to be the
season for cooking out here thanks for watching guys and until then i'll see you next time
you