Setting Up My Garden for Food Vegetables Container Gardening Flowers for Wildlife Birds Hummingbirds

Hi, this is Robbie from Southern California. You know, I've been working in my bird garden, me and Zoe, and I'm going to take you through a lot of it will be in small clips, but you'll be able to see what I'm doing. And of course, I'll be talking about it as well, because I know you pick up a lot of tips and tricks and easy way of growing when I do it this way. So you can watch me. There's things I forget to talk about and you go, wow, I didn't know that. Well, now you'll be able to watch and you'll see that. Don't worry, I'm not taking everything out because we leave a lot for the birds and there's a whole lot still left for the birds to feed on since there's not that much food around, you know, we cater to mother nature. So I am working my tail off. I've got plants all through there, all through there. And I'm now working on this one. Let me show you something. I wasn't going to bother, but I thought you may want to see this, this plant that Gary brought home. I think he picked it up, the torch lily for $5. Let me show you where it was. Look in an empty pot. And when I was watering the plant on the top, still in the pot, without knowing until I pulled it up now, look at this. That's a root ball. See how plants will leave the pot. That's why I leave a lot of stuff in pots. It doesn't matter. These are the feeder roots. These are the roots that they're going to pull water and nutrition up with. Well, this pot, obviously had big enough holes for them to send this plant to send out all this. So what I'm going to do, it's kind of the first one I'm actually doing is I'm going to cut the pot, get as much of the pot away from those roots, and I'm going to drop it in here. But that's why it's okay to leave certain plants in pots. As long as there's holes, your roots will go down and the plant will grow beautiful. It's been growing beautiful. But now I think it's about time. It's tried so hard and it's drought tolerant to go ahead and just put it in here and get rid of that pot, but I'll keep the label. Okay. Let me get this planted. So it's so embedded. I cut as much as I could off. Technically I could cut it and let the plant start over, which a lot of people would do. It will put it into shock. Now that we're at the end of May, going into June, it's going to get hot and it's using these roots. And I think the best thing for me is just drop the whole thing down because later on different times of the year, you can split this plant off into different plants. And then we can just chop it out and make multiple plants out of it. But for now, because it's going to spread sideways, I'm just going to leave it and get it planted just the way it is. For the first time in two and a half years, this old tote is finally going to get moved. I don't know where. Whoa. Oh, look at all the earthworms and things under there. Anyways, I might just leave it here for now. Empty. It will be moved because I'm working on that. Got my planters pretty much done there. Just want to put some things in the flower pots in the front to cover this little water feature. That is mint. Spearmint, mind you. See the spearmint? So I pulled a lot of it out for the summer and then in the winter it can grow back. But that is spearmint just looking for its way out. And as soon as it comes from there and gets underneath, look at that. It pops up there. It pops up here. I'll probably just pull that out and just brush over the soil. But this I got to find a new home for. This is about, oh, I don't know, five, six years old. It's bent. It was abused. But, you know, I could either cut the rim and make it a little smaller and find a place for it or just leave it and push it up against the wall where it's bent because this side is really good and it has more life in itself. Problem is I got to figure out where I'm going to put it. And I don't know if there's a place for that here because I need paths to walk through. All right, I'm going back to work. So the green tub that's been here for two and a half years that I've been trying to move is now moved. Isn't that beautiful? Got that all planted up. This is great. I can put pots there. I've got flowers growing. I'm going to have vegetables growing in there, walking onions. But look at this. I moved it. I think that's a perfect spot. It had that bulge, but it's going to be up against the wall here. Look at that. I'm going to go ahead and fill it. You know how I do it. I'm going to clean up the garden. We've got a lot of powder and mildew leaves and stuff that's all going to be taken off. I'm going to put more branches, though, on the bottom because that's really what I want to do. I can still get to my potatoes. There's a tomato in there will probably be trimmed out. Some of this will be trimmed back later. I want to make sure I've got a lot of brassicas because I do a lot of green drinks. I think that really does help with my health and Gary's too. So I want to keep as many brassicas going as possible. I'm going to get more tree colors along the back, but that's later. Right now I'm going to get this filled up, keep the walking onions on both sides. Though I was going to pull this out, this was the plant that I absolutely loved. It gets big green leaves and it grew up in there and it came up from seed and I was just about ready to take the whole thing out and I looked at it and thought, I know what that is and I want to keep that plant. It's actually related to this brassica. Look at this. Look at the size of the leaves. So I'm going to go ahead, keep that, keep it bushed down. I took off some of the flowers as you can see and I'm staking it up. We're going to leave that. I'm going to get some more soil or whatever I can pick up from the ground and load it up in there. Probably will put some leaves in there. You know how I feed my plants? The way you're not supposed to. Don't tell anybody because it's wrong. I just load leaves up in there. I'll put a bunch of leaves in there and then I'll just top dress it. Even some of those I put in here. All this, don't worry about the powdery mildew. Powdery mildew can't live once it's off the plant. And then I'll load that up from stuff from the bottom. Just whatever's on the bottom, it doesn't matter. Just load that up on top. That will all decay in there and when it decays, it's going to feed my walking onions and feed this. And this, I'm not sure what I'll put in there. I might load it with branches and then just put, top dress it with buckets or pots and then I can change my mind later. Or I might plant directly in it. Maybe I'll do zucchini. I don't know. It's kind of like here. This one is all planted in this dog kennel. That's a dog kennel. I've got stories on that, how we got that years ago. So that is kind of permanent, unless I want to pull them out. But these are all in pots. So if I wanted to move this plant, because Gary said he may want it, want to move my milkweed. I'm starting some hummingbird lunch in there. I don't know if this will make it. It's kind of just stuck in there. It's a lemon verbena. I've got more walking onions. This is just a brassica. It looks like a, it's a type of collard. I actually put this here because there were, oh, this was covered in bugs. Just covered. And I literally brought the pot here and left it in there for the bush tits and the birds in the yard. It's almost gone. See, the water. They can come there, eat, feast, and be merry. So I'm going to keep going and we'll see how this turns out. And if I finish it, you might see it on the next garden tour. But if not, we are on our way because I have been working my way down. That is done. All done in pots. A few things planted in that great big dog kennel. These came out of a groomer's once. They redid it and they threw them out and we ended up with all these kennels. My daughter called me. She worked at a pet store and said, you better get out here. They're throwing them out. And boy, Gary went down there with his truck. And then I've got two more to do there. I just did this one also in pots. So that one's done with a tomato in the middle and some walking onions and marigolds and whatever else. This is a four o'clock. Came up wild. It's a red four o'clock, but it was in a pot. And I thought, why not? I'm going to go ahead and leave it in the pot. It's, he doesn't like them on the ground because they spread like weeds everywhere. But in a pot, I have control of it and I'll do those two. And then I'm not sure yet. I may leave the tree collard for the year because it rotted out there. But we just figured out, I was looking around with Gary and we saw that it did send roots out. The last one didn't. That's a long story on itself, but it did send roots out. So this is rooted and it's anchored by that one. That one grew in the tote. There are holes, but the holes, it didn't go through the holes. It's actually still growing all these years in an 18 gallon tote, but it's pretty much done. See how it's decayed out? So I'm going to leave this for now. Maybe I'll top dress this and put some pots on top when I'm done with that. And then when this dies out, we can slowly cut it back and then leave this plant. But it's kind of awkward. It's in a bad spot, but boy, summer's coming and I make a lot out of the tree collard. So I'm going to leave it. So I'm going to leave that for now. And that I'll get to later. I'm not going to do that right now because this is, it's like wildflowers, though it is not. It's all kinds of brassicas. You've got the bees all over it, which you can probably just see. They're working it. And then the hummingbirds feed off of it. All the small birds come. They're all doing their own thing. You've got the bees and the hummingbirds using the flowers. Then you've got the gold finches coming in and chewing on the greens right now. And then once it goes to seed, they eat the seeds as well. So you've got a whole thing. You got house finches coming in, eating the seeds. So I'm going to leave this little forest of brassicas because I want to move that cage to somewhere that's to feed birds in. And then I'm going to get my trough in here. See how I just collect stuff in the garden? That will all go in the big silver trough from the other side of the garden down there when I move it. But I'm still using that soil because I loaded it up and all my branches and stuff disappeared. And now I have free soil. Absolutely free. You could do that in your yard. You could take a tote, a container, and start loading up all your stuff because it's like, well, I don't need it right now. I'll just throw it in the garbage. But you're throwing away, not only are you throwing away your free soil, it's money. It's better than what you can get in a bag. Better. So that's the way I look at it. So I load it up in there. Now I haven't been taking care of it or putting anything on top, so it hasn't broke down. It would break down if I put soil or a little bit of something on top or more food matter in there. Right now those are just branches, but that's okay because that's going to go on the bottom. But if you threw leaves and all kinds of plant matter from your garden and watered it, it would turn into compost and then you can go dig it out and use it anywhere you want. So that's what's going on. So I'm going to get this finished hopefully today or get it... Oh, there we go. There we go. If it's in this green tote, that's going to have to be changed. See, it's the same one. Even the same label. Just some thrift store. I picked it up for a couple bucks. Now I can put the branches on the bottom here, load them up in here. Oh, maybe a third of the way up and then just take something off the ground or more leaf matter. The leaf matter mixed with the brown is what's going to break it down into wonderful soil. Okay, back to work I go. Cool. So no joke, I get up in the morning, I come out here with a cup of coffee, usually only drink half because I'm so anxious to get going in the garden. Now really, please, I want to impress this on you. Do not throw away your brown leaves from your plants. This is free soil. Go read a bag of potting soil, garden soil, whatever, when you go to the nursery next time or your big box stores. You know what I'm talking about, Home Depot or Lowe's. Look at any of the bags and read it. Forest matter is their biggest thing they use. Forest matter, what grows in the forest? Trees. That's what they're doing. They're chopping up trees and leaves and everything. They're decaying it down and they're selling it to you for anywhere from $20 to $50 a pack. You can do it too. I mean, if they can do it, why can't you? You don't have to do it all at one time. You could designate a tote, a trash can, a bucket, whatever space you've got to start throwing all your plant matter in. And then you could go back and get it. But if you're growing like I'm growing now, I'm getting it now. I'm getting it from where I stored it just because I didn't want to throw it away and I didn't water it. We'll talk about that in a minute. And then I'm going around the yard and I'm collecting greens. Now, why am I collecting some greens? Because really to break down branches, big branches and all that matter, you need a mix of brown and green. And if it's not green, it's brown. Some of you ask, well, what if the leaves turn brown or what if they're almost brown? Then it's brown. You want something that's green. Now, if it's yellow, I'm going to consider that green because yellow hasn't died completely back. It still has moisture and stuff in it. But the point is you can make your own. Nature does it every day. Nobody's helping her. That was Mother Nature on the phone. No, I'm kidding. Anyways, that's the point I'm trying to make. Nobody is helping. It's a very simple process. The trees around grow, the leaves fall, branches break off. They start to build a pile. It rains, it gets damp, morning dew, and it all starts to break down underneath. Of course, on the top where there's air, it's not going to break down. But anything underneath, one inch underneath, it all starts to break down and it makes soil for the plants that are growing in the wild where nobody's there with a hose or raking or turning. Oh, that's the last thing I'm doing. I do not turn. Everything gets dropped and left. I don't want to disturb all the microbes or earthworms or whatever gets in there to break it down. It's a whole city in there and it's all doing what it's supposed to do. If I take my shovel to it or my pitchfork and I flip it around, I'm disturbing them. I don't want to do that. Think of it as an ant farm. It's all working and doing what you want it to do. All you want to do is layer. Think of a lasagna. You want to layer it and you want to build on top. And remember, water is life. So these microbes, earthworms, they all need a little water. So water it as if there's a plant in there. Okay, I'm not done. I'm gonna go get breakfast. I've got the two pots there. I'm going to top dress this with some more anything from the ground. I've been taking out a pot. See, sometimes I have pots around that things grew and kind of got pushed to the side, but all that broke down. I had to water it. Even though I'm not done, I want to keep building this up a little bit. Now I won't use so much big trunks like this. This is all brassicas, by the way, and that's going to break down completely. I'm going to put smaller things on the top, maybe some grass or or more leaves, and then I can top dress it with whatever I want. I can use soil from another container or I could put potting mix if I didn't have. But the point is, you have to water it because there's all kinds of critters living in here and you don't want it to dry out. That's why I had to hit it with water. And I'm leaving the bucket in here, though I don't see anything, in case there's tiny baby earthworms in there. They're going to crawl out because, believe you me, they crawl good and they'll go in here. And now it's damp. Now the holes here are about two inches up. If you're in a rainy, really wet place, you wouldn't want to do that. You want the holes closer to the ground. Notice how far up they are. So roots from pepper trees, and let me tell you something, they travel, will not be able to get into those holes that are there, all right. But when it gets hot and it's going to start getting really hot, it's always going to have a reservoir of water. So whatever plants I put in there, whether they're in pots or directly planted in there, they can send their feeder roots, the roots that collect food and water, all the way down and they'll have water until I come back and water it. I think this is going to be really good. It's all coming along really nice. All right, I'm going to go get breakfast. So the sun is going down. It's been a long day, but that's done. That's done. That's done. This is done. It's never done because I've got potatoes to harvest and different things, but this is done and that is done. I only have two more of those dog kennels to do and I've decided to go with the tomato in here and an eggplant. And who knows, I might plant some more. Maybe I'll even put another tomato plant back there. Well, we'll see what happens in a couple days. So I hope you enjoy this. This is how I do my planting. Everything is simple. Look how beautiful the tree colors are and what a beautiful, quiet evening as the sun is setting. With that, have a wonderful day and don't forget to eat what you grow. Bye-bye. Wow, I got a lot done.