Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com ! Today we have another exciting episode for
you.
And we’re doing a growing your greens in a minute.
So this is one of my short format videos.
I don’t know if it’s going to actually be a minute.
But today’s episode is the top 5 tips for growing food in a container garden, like I
have here.
I’m sitting here in my driveway and you can’t really plant stuff in the concrete
on the driveway.
So at the end of the driveway I actually just put some half wine barrels or whiskey barrels.
And I’ve filled them up with some good soil and I’m growing food in there.
And it really is that easy.
I mean it doesn’t take rocket science.
But with my 5 tips, you’re going to be a sure success, whether you’ve been growing
or whether you’re going to start to grow in containers.
Alright, so let’s get into the tips.
Tip number 1- get the biggest size container you can.
I like these half wine barrels or half whiskey barrels because actually they’re quite wide.
So actually I could plant a number of things in there.
Also you want to ensure that it’s the proper depth.
I like minimum, like 12 inches of depth, you know, that’s what I really like.
More than that straight, I mean, I don’t really need all the depth in here.
But minimum 12 to 15 , maybe 24, that’s perfect.
And then yeah you want the biggest circumference as possible to grow food in containers.
And we’ll get into that in just a little bit.
Tip number 2- is to get an appropriate soil mixture for your container.
If you just go in to your back yard and start digging up the clay, the sand, whatever you
got in your back yard and put it in the container, and then start to grow in that, you may not
have the best luck.
Likewise, many bagged organic compost from the store may not be that good.
They may not work.
You may fill up your container, you’re excited to have a container, and you plant stuff in
there and stuff doesn’t grow.
And you know, there’s many reasons for that.
But one of the main reasons is because you don’t have a good soil mixture.
So I recommend, number one, a good potting soil mixture.
And if you’re looking for, probably one of the best brands out there, you want to
check out the Dr Earth brand of potting soils.
They are pretty high quality stuff and they’re nationally, you know, distributed.
So check I think with maybe a local True Value Hardware I believe has those, or can special
order them if your local nursery does not.
You’ll not find those, you know, at any kind of Big Box store.
Now besides using the potting soil, make sure you have nutrition in the potting soil for
the plants.
Dr Earth adds some nutrients in there.
But some additional things that I would like to add for the plants include things like
the rock dust, things like the worm castings.
Those are like really critical in my opinion, and most potting soil mixtures unfortunately
leave those out.
If you want to learn more about the rock dust and the worm castings, please check my other
videos.
Actually I’ll put links down below to two videos on, one on rock dust and one on worm
castings, and why they are still important.
And the third thing that I would actually do is not actually add some kind of synthetic
chemical fertilizer, like pretty much everybody is taught.
I’d actually use what’s called compost tea.
And the compost tea, brew it on up, and then basically that invigorates your soil with
nutrition.
With some nutrients but mostly the biology.
And what people don’t tell you that, people just think oh you need fertilizer to feed
your plants.
The plants don’t necessarily need fertilizer.
Fertilizer to the plants like synthetic fertilizers, chemical fertilizers, made in a factory everywhere
and call them, is kind of like us living on vitamin supplements.
We don’t want to live on vitamin supplements.
We want to live on real food and hopefully that’s one of the reasons why you want to
grow your own food.
To get some real food instead of living off of vitamins or vitamin enriched full foods,
like cereals that they actually add vitamins to.
Because when they processed the cereals, white flour, white sugar, all the vitamins and you
know, minerals are drastically reduced.
So they actually have to add stuff back in, right.
And that’s what fertilizer is for your plants.
And we want to set up an environment where we have a good organic compost and a biology
and the rock dust and the trace minerals, even something like the sea minerals in the
soil so that they can be accessed by the plant through the biology.
And that’s pretty much how we work when we eat food, actually the food is digested
not by us.
We don’t have like teeth in our stomachs to chew everything up.
But we have symbiotic beneficial bacteria and fungi in out stomachs.
And that’s the system that we want to set up in a container.
Alright.
Tip number 3- is plant densely.
So I have these actually planted very lightly.
I have four plants in here, but I could easily fit maybe 6 to 8 of these guys.
This is some Siberian kale.
So it’s my favorite winter variety kale.
Really mild.
If you don’t like strong tasting kale.
So yeah, plant it densely so you have more food in your space.
Now if I was planting tomatoes in here, because tomatoes kind of grow out really big, I’d
probably maybe then plant like maybe 2, one on each side.
Peppers, I might put maybe 4 or 5.
And space things out accordingly.
I always want to encourage you guys, specially in containers, grow the most valuable food
to you and to me, those are the leafy greens.
Leafy greens are quite expensive to buy.
But, you know, they’re easy to grow and they taste so much better when they’re fresh
picked at home.
Okay, tip number 4 - is water appropriately.
So I have set up an irrigation system that basically just attaches to the hose bib, comes
on on a timer, so I don’t have to worry about watering.
So it always gets watered.
One of the biggest failures I see in container gardening is that you’re either over watering,
because like oh I love my plants I’m going to give them water.
And we think we equate like loving our plants with giving it water, giving it something,
when really we need to give it the appropriate amount of water.
And so I have this going off , at present time I go once a day if it’s raining it
might actually stop going off , because I have a sensor that protects that.
And you want to help the soil nice and moist.
You don’t want it sopping wet and you don’t want it too dry either.
And that’s another big challenge that I see when people are container gardening.
So last tip, tip number 5 - is learn as you grow, right.
If this is your first time or whether you’ve been growing in containers a lot, there is
always something new to learn when you’re gardening, right.
And so every time you plant a plant and it makes it or doesn’t make it, figure out
why it didn’t make it or figure why it it worked.
And hey, when I added that compost tea things shot up and it grew better.
Maybe that’s good for your plants, maybe that’s a better way to love your plants
than giving it excess water, right.
Spray it with some compost tea.Now yeah I don’t agree with, you know, spraying on
too much compost tea, but I like to do it upon initial planting, and then maybe like
once a week to just reinvigorate.
But yeah, learn as you grow.
That’s super important.
If you fail, try, try again.
The worst thing that’s going to happen if you plant a garden and you mess up, the plants
don’t make it.
You buy new seeds, you buy new plant starts, you try again.
But more importantly you do it a little bit differently.
And this is like how we learn.
This is how we learn how to walk, this is how we learn how to ride a bike, you know.
Sometimes you fail, you fall over on the bike or when you’re trying to walk as a baby,
but you get back up and you do it.
And everybody on the world could walk, right.
And everybody in the whole world could absolutely garden too.
But you need to learn the skill of how to do it.
And you are only going to learn by your successes and by your failures.
And I want you to learn from both of them.
Both your failures but more importantly also your successes.
When things grow well you’re going to know wow, the Siberian kale does amazing in my
container.
But when I grew tomatoes like it really didn’t yield a lot of food.
So I’m not really going to do that again.
So I’m going to grow more kales and other leafy greens.
Like when I grow mâche in the containers, it does amazing.
And I only know all the stuff I know about gardening through trial and error and through,
you know, reading things and reading books and researching and what not.
But mainly I’m self taught.
I learn what I know from doing it.
And that’s the main thing- get out there and do it.
So plant that container garden , and now you too can be successful with these 5 tips.
If you guys enjoyed this short format video, hey please give me a thumbs up to let me know.
Also be sure to click that Subscribe button right down below to be notified of my new
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And be sure to check my past episodes.
I have over a eleven hundred episodes now, teaching you guys all aspects so that you
guys could grow your own food at home and be independent of the food system which is
a method of control.
So once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com . We’ll see you next
time, and until then remember- keep
on growing.