FREE Ways to Make Soil & Fertilizer for Container Gardening & in Ground to Grow Organic Food Garden

Hi, it is Robbie from Southern California and Zoe too, of course. We've been working all morning. Gary's washing after emus. We got a whole new setup for him. So let me show you what we've been doing this morning. I've been taking the seed heads off of these brassicas. Now don't worry, you know I always tell you I leave it for the birds, but I have left plenty for the birds. Look at all that. All those yellow flowers are brassicas, different types, all kinds, and I'm going to leave that right now for the birds because I'm not over there working. I am here working. And what I'm doing is I'm trying to get these old dog kennels set up so I can get plants growing in them, but kind of in a way where I can move them later. And I also want to make sure I have enough greens to make green drinks and stir fries or whatever I want to make or salads. So this is my goal, to get this looking something like what you see here in there, this one. And that's the start. Let me show you over here. We'll come here and I'll show you what I'm going to do. Zoe's been with me all morning. This is set up exactly the way I want, except for that fountain. I'm going to take apart, gut it, and put it back. That's a candlestick and they love it. This is a food tray for this. This is a solar fountain. That's nothing more than when you buy hamburgers or meat at the grocery store. It comes like that. Look at that, free with some rocks and the birds are crazy about it. Now, as you can see, these are all pots. In here is all the weeds and everything I've been pulling. It's not really weeds. It's dead leaves and stuff off of plants. And then I'm putting flowers. Look at this. Is that not beautiful? And pots. I've got some salvias. I've got more geraniums. I've even got forget-me-nots. I've got a wildflower I picked. I went for a walk and picked some wildflowers. We'll see it. That's called, I think it's called sticky monkey plant. And that's back there. It's the yellow one that you see there. This is what I'm going to do with all of them. Even this one is done. Now, I left this plant in its pot, as you can see. And that's going to stay there for now. And then, oh, something got in here and chewed a lot of that up. Well, we have more compost. I'll get something else in there and that's okay. Then I've got some milkweed. It's been bringing in monarchs. I've got the walking onions, another brassica. But that's not what I wanted to talk about today. I'm growing potatoes in here. You know that. I have not gotten to this. I've cleared all the mint out of here because though I love my mint and I love having it all winter through the ground, you walk through it. It smells so good. The issue is we do, living up on the hills here, do have rattlesnakes. And last year there were about four of them found. Not directly on the property. There were some up there. There were some out front. And I believe there was one on the property. Well, when I walk through here, I want it clear on the ground because they don't want to be out in the open. And I do have a gopher snake living here and I want him here. He's taking care of rodents and he will keep out the rattlesnakes because this is his territory. But let's just say when I'm walking through my garden, I want to know what's at my feet. So when you leave it open like this, they're not going to be hanging around and hopefully they'll stay out there. And usually they do. So this is what I did here. Zoe and I have been out here all morning while I was having coffee and we filled this. Now this has got horrible soil on the bottom. Literally hard clay, but it does drain. And there are holes all the way around. I think it's more on the back. But instead of lugging everything out, I'm top dressing it. So all these seed heads came off of here. And see how small the leaves are? This is really what I wanted to show you. See how small these are? This should be massive leaves. But when you're growing so many seed heads, like those yellow ones over here, all the yellow flowers, the plant usually produces a lot smaller leaves. See how small the leaves are and how big they should be? Bigger than that. But it puts all its energy and strength into growing the seeds because it's reproducing. It's not going to die back. Brassicas could live for about five, six years without a problem. So I leave them. But I want to make sure that I have food for myself as well as nature. So this is why I went ahead and trimmed it back. I will pick through the ones that grow really good and the ones that don't. I'll go ahead and compost it. So let me show you what happens when a plant decides not to throw seeds for whatever reason. Here is the same plant. Do you see this? Can you believe? Look at the size leaves of this. Now this is in the ground. But I compost in there. See I've got leaves and stuff in there. I compost in there. I'm growing potatoes there. This one was a bunch of the same thing. Leaves from the garden. And then I put a purple tree collard I believe. Oh so it's the purple tree collard that is going to seed right now. All right. And all this is leaching with the holes in the back. There's holes back here where you see the, it's what is that, weed cover. It's draining out there. It's feeding that plant. That's why I say leaves from the garden is our plant food. When it's breaking down in here and it's leaching out, it's feeding this plant. Look at the size of this thing. This is unreal. I'm hoping you can see how big the leaves are. Now had this plant gone to seed, we would never have had this size leaves on it. And this is wonderful. A little too big to eat. The smaller the leaves, the sweeter they are. But still this is beautiful. So that's what's going on there. And that's what I really wanted to share with you. If you look at your plant and it went from big leaves, nice big leaves, the leaves, tiny skinny things, that's usually because it's throwing seed heads and it's putting all its energy into doing that. Now it will come back once it's done. Now if it's not done, there are times that just because you cut the seed heads off doesn't mean you fix the, let's say your problem and you want to have big leaves. It will continue to try to produce more. Once it's out of the cycle and the plant isn't in the producing stage, it will start to grow again. So going back to this. So this has been, I'm going to call it top dressed right now with leaves and stuff from the garden, including the seeds that are going to break down and make the best soil. So I'm going to leave it like that. Then I'm going to start top dressing it, really covering that with whatever. It could be dried brown leaves. I'm going to put stuff that's brown on the top. Could be wood chips from what Gary's got. It could be just soil from another tote. I'm going to empty this one finally. I've been talking about it for what, two and a half years? I'm going to get all that out though. It's got great, great soil because everything broke down that I put in there. I'll probably do the same thing I did there. Grab some of the soil from here, put it in pots, get some flowers planted, and then the rest will go in there. And then I'm just going to put pots on top like I just showed you over there. The reason is I can move them and I don't have to break my back trying to fix everything up. It's the easiest way to do it. Next year I can remove the pots if I want to and plant vegetables or anything in there. I still might plant some vegetables. Maybe I'll put a tomato in there. Tomatoes would do really good. I've got a tomato that came up here. It's been growing all winter. It's not doing good, but I didn't plant it. Look at that. So we'll see what I'm going to do as we go, but I just wanted you to see and understand that if any of your plants are going to seed, they're not at a loss at all. They're just trying to do what nature wants them to do, put everything that they've got into the seed heads, and then at that point they will be reproducing. And then when it's all done, they'll start growing back again, so it's not a loss. So that's what Zoe and I have been doing all morning. I'm really excited when we're done with that, which I should be done today. I'm going to do that, and then all my plants that have died back here, like you think, geez, what are you doing all this? Are you composting all this? Look at this. These are all different brassicas. I love the shape. So nice, and they're light, and let me tell you something. They last for years. All right, I wasn't going to do that, but let's go take a walk. Isn't that beautiful? So don't worry. Now birds have plenty of food. This is what I've been doing with this, so that'll be good. Finally, hopefully I'll go through a garden tour and it'll be gone. Check the next garden tour and see if it's there. I've been talking about two years. It got moved there, and it's like, I'm going to move it next week. I'm going to move it next week. There it is. Look what? Oh, there's a bird already on it. So I've been zip tying these onto here. This is the rebar, and then I'm also wiring it. So I'm using that rebar wire I use all over the garden because you pay, what, $10 for 400 feet or something, and just a little bit. So this way, if a hawk came this way, they're not going to bother them, and I'm going to hang, Gary, just put a hook up there for me. I'm going to hang a feeder up there. This is going to extend the bird garden. We have to extend it. We have way too many birds to not extend it out. So that's going to go this way, and if all goes well, I'll get some tomatoes or vegetables growing. I got a little bit going in there, but this way, I'll have more for the birds, more places to set up fountains. I've got some sitting here on these things I pick up at the dollar store. Look at that. Can you believe this? See this? What is this? This is a, what, almost a three-foot tree collard in this little tiny thing. It's just amazing how they grow. You can put those in a pot, and of course, it would get bigger, but look at that, and that's growing in there, and then I've got my blanket flower that came up. I didn't plant it. Something planted it here, and these are beautiful. I might move this. I've been trying to collect the seeds. This isn't the seed. This is the ball that's left, the spiky ball. The seeds are actually in this part. Let's see if I can catch it, because if you think you're catching it on the ball, this is where the seeds are, and they'll be inside each one of those. So if you've got the blanket flower, and you think, oh, I've got seeds there. No, seeds are gone already. Birds either ate them. Oh, here's another flower that's going to open. These are magnificent. I can't believe that Mother Nature gave me this for free. Look at that, and I've been reading up. You can't believe everything you read that it says you plant it, and it grows for an entire year, and then in its second year, it flowers. Don't believe that. It came up in this flower pot that I had something else growing in the fall, and then immediately produced flowers. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff out there that simply isn't the right information. It flowered right away, because I know that, because I had something else I planted in there, and then this little plant came up, and thank goodness I didn't pull it out thinking it was weed. So that's what we've been doing all morning. Now I'm going to go get some other stuff done. I've got fountains and everything I'm planting. I'm putting out here, and I want to get this fixed up, and I've got to get some gloves. Because I'm either going to cut out my dragon fruit. I don't want to cut it. We're going to start getting flowers. I think Gary found the flower in his garden, the bud, the bud of a flower. I might redirect it up, and kind of, well, I got to get heavy gloves. Let's say you only try once without gloves. Yes, I tried. So I might just redirect it, or I'll leave it. Now that I think I am going to move this tote. This tote, I think this tote is about eight, nine years old, and yeah, it's bent up because I didn't take care of it, and I really don't think I'm going to throw it out because it's not broke. It's bent because I had a great big, I think it was a purple sprouting broccoli in there that fell over, and I let it just lay on its side, and it bent it. But if I can get that soil out of there, I'll be able to walk back there, and then I can figure out where else I want to put that great big tote. Isn't that something all these years? Well, these are what, eight years old at least. They're doing really good. I'm leaving that, and here I'm propagating, doing this is just a nice place to propagate. I'm letting my chocolate mint grow here, because I use this all the time, and if I wanted to pull it out, I would just keep making more pots of that, because I love chocolate mint. The other mint I showed you was spearmint. So that's what's been going on today. The weather is changing, yet we're still in the 50s at night. So once it turns into the 60s, my ginger, turmeric, watermelon, cucumbers, everything will start to grow. Right now it's just sitting, but I am getting zucchini, and I'm not sure, but I might do a separate setup for zucchini here in small totes that you can get now at Dollar Tree for five dollars. They're not as big as the 18-gallon, of course. They're 10 gallons. You know, I really like them. One big plant per tote, and then you can spot them with different flower pots and stuff like it. I do. I know it looks so bare now, but now I can get in here. I don't need these sticks here. I can see if I've got any potatoes in here. Oh, yes, little tiny potatoes, and they're green, so we'll plant those, but I have to dig this up and see what's in here. This is easy. This I just pick up, tip it in my wheelbarrow, get all the potatoes I want out, and that's it. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I think I'm just going to leave these two and let the rest of them do its thing. I can spot more pots in there. I'm going to put these pots, these plants, I'm going to clean them up, leave them in the pot, but they're going to go on top in there so they can grow and do their thing because Gary wants them, but he doesn't want them yet. This way you just grab them. In the meantime, their roots will go out, and they will pick up nutrition from when you set it up in here with all this matter. They're going to pick up nutrition from the container they're growing in, even though they're still going to be in the pots like the other ones. I hope I'm not going too fast and you understand that because their fine roots are actually the roots that feed the plant. They pick up water and food. The big roots are more of an anchor. They anchor the plant in, which is in the pot. You can't leave it in there forever, but I could leave it in there for another year, and then I could change the whole thing. I could even plant in there directly later on when I want. That's how I'm going to set this up. You'll see it on the garden tour. I'll get to that one later. I'll scrub my angel at one point. It's got a lot of algae. I hose it and clean it really good, but there's not much you can do about algae. It doesn't hurt the birds, but I do need to clean that up a little bit. I think I'm going to spot some pots around there as well. I might put walking onions. Look how beautiful the walking onions look. I can put some pots of walking onions around there. Give it kind of a like a pond side plant. Isn't that pretty? That will look really nice. Maybe even some flowers around there. If I don't want to take care of anything, I put geraniums because geraniums grow everywhere at any time without any work. I hope I gave you kind of a fun little thing to see. I hope you pick up tips from me because there's so many things I don't talk about that I know, but I don't think about. Like here. You remember me putting in all these tree collards? Why do you think they're growing so good? They're in the ground. You know why? Because the two pots on either side of them are getting watered, which is feeding directly to the roots. That's why they're doing excellent because it's what's next to it, not what's in front of it because there's absolutely nothing but dry soil. I don't even have to think about anything. It's the same thing within here. They're all getting moisture from the bottom. When you leave things in pots, there's always water underneath. There's earthworms underneath, and they feed from underneath as long as you've got drain holes underneath. If you've got drain holes on the side, then bury your pot more. But here, remember, anytime I put a pot, I always get the message, do you put drain holes? Yes, you have to have drain holes because none of these plants that I've got here can grow in water. So if it gets too wet, the plant drowns. It'll look like it's not getting enough water, but it's actually getting too much water. And that's it. And remember, like I showed you, if something gets eaten during the night or doesn't work out, put it back in. It becomes your soil and keep going because even nature takes out its own plants. So we can't do anything perfect because, well, that's all part of nature. So with that, have a wonderful day. And don't forget to eat what you grow. Oh my gosh, that's like one green drink. That's actually too much for a green drink. This is absolutely beautiful. And this is some sort of brassica that came up from seed. Oh, this might be my pride and joy that went to seed, that died back years ago, last year. That's just gorgeous. I'm going to cater to that. Maybe I will put another pot there. There's a second one next to it. There's a purple tree collar. I probably planted the purple tree collar. That's a purple tree collar coming up next to it. Oh, I'm just so excited with this. I have to make sure those pots are well watered because everything encircling this plant is making this plant grow this big. Look at that. The leaf goes all the way down there. Can you see that? Unbelievable. Have a great day. Bye-bye. Wow.