CONTAINER VEGETABLE GARDENING

setting up a new container garden is not really very easy but also very rewarding
and today's episode we look at all the steps you need to set up your own
container garden the products you will need to set up your container garden are
whiskey or wine barrels some plastic saucers potting mix drip irrigation
tubes and emitters and some plants so our first step is to plan the area and
to prepare our containers so here we have about a 45 foot area that you see
here that we are planning to use to set up our container garden and as long as
you know how many whiskey barrels or wine barrels you'll be using you can
measure out the area that you need and then start placing your wine barrels or
whiskey barrels along the line
and in this area we are using about five whiskey barrels this is the pre-drilled
hole for the whiskey barrel these whiskey barrels come with pre-drilled
holes but if you do not have holes drilled just make sure that you drill
some holes
these are plastic saucers that will help you catch the water under the container
this will also help your pavers from getting stained so as you can see here
what we are doing is we are taking our whiskey barrel containers and placing
these saucers below them and you need to do this now because once you add the
soil it's going to be very heavy and make sure you Center it in such a way
that the whiskey barrel sits right between the plastic saucer as you can
see here and this is going to catch the water as you what are the plants we are
now going to be setting up our drip line and that's going to be a next step but
you can see here all the containers are lined up and ready
let's now proceed to setting up the main drip line they're going to be using this
mainline tubing this is a 5/8 inch poly hose and it's very easy to find them you
can buy them on Amazon you can buy them at a lot of gardening centers like
Lowes and Home Depot as you can see here we've laid out all our containers
and the drip line the main drip line is set up and the main drip line will end
in this end connector you first need to measure and cut the drip line to the
required size and at the end since we are expanding this drip connection that
we already have you're going to be removing this end connector as you see
here and we're going to be putting an elbow that will connect to our new drip
irrigation line
so as you can see here these pieces fit exactly into each other and that is why
you need to make sure that you buy products from the same company I will
provide some product links in the video description below so that it's easier
for you to buy these products without worrying about compatibility and once
again we are just going to make sure that our mainline fits the size of this
line that we set up and we just push in and this mainline is now set up you can
use some garden pins to secure your mainline
and at the end what we're gonna do is make sure once again that we cut to size
and then add the end connector here this is the run off so in case you want to
flush the line you just open up that gap and I have discussed this in one of my
previous videos as well and I've used some duct tape to secure the main line
now the main line might not sit properly it might be like coil so the duct tape
really helps
our next step is to add the potting mix now you have two options here one you
can use like bagged potting mix that you get at Costco this is the miracle grow
organic choice potting mix which retains a lot of water and has high-quality
ingredients and it has a lot of water retention properties as well so what I'm
doing here is I'm just cutting this bag in half inside the container these are
pretty heavy bags and to save your backs you can just use this technique where
you cut the bag in half and then add the soil inside the container and then just
lift up half the bag and it becomes very easy to handle this
potting mix in this way and once you've settled the potting mix down in the
container you can water it you can make sure that there are no air gaps in the
soil now and this will make sure that the soil settles down in the container
this is an important step that a lot of us miss after adding soil to the
container make sure you water it and now our option two is to use a DIY potting
mix where we are using peat moss as you can see here and you're supposed to use
this in the proportion of 30 percent peat moss 30 percent compost and 30
percent perlite or vermiculite now I have made this potting mix so many
times that I just eyeball the quantity of the peat moss and once I am done with
adding the peat moss I add the other ingredients and remember that I'm not
really filling up this container completely now and you'll shortly see
the reason why I've added to the peat moss now and I'm
now going to add the compost this is the free compost that we got from our city
and that was really helpful and adding some volume to these containers we are
now going to be adding some perlite you don't have to add a lot of perlite and
you can also substitute this by using vermiculite depending on what's
available in your area and a lot of people had some concerns about whether
they are safe or not they are completely safe and what I do is I just moisten
them and then I make sure that I mix them very well as you can see here and
the reason I only fill half the container is because I wanted this
container to have good drainage and I'm going to water this so that all the
water drains properly from half this container now if you fill this container
to the top it might not be very easy for the water to go all the way down so this
is just a little tip for you to know that it's best to fill half the
container and then water and then fill the rest of the container
so that's exactly what we're doing here we are now
filling in the rest of the container with peat moss compost and perlite it's
a very similar to what we did I'm using two sources of compost here this is the
compost that we got from the city and then I'm also using some horse manure compost
and as you can see here this forms a really good well draining potting mix
and this is a lot cheaper than buying your own potting mix as well
as you can see here there's pretty fast draining
now instead of perlite you can also use vermiculite we prepared this one
container where we use peat moss compost and then we added a mix of perlite and
vermiculite and the reason for using vermiculite in your mix is to retain
more water in your potting mix now some people have asked me whether vermiculite
contains asbestos or some other harmful ingredients now this is actually a myth
or news that were shared many many years ago
and these days the vermiculite and perlite that you get in the stores did
not have any contaminants they don't have asbestos
there's just volcanic rocks and made from ingredients that are very safe to
use in your garden as you can see here we are mixing this up you can see the
tiny particles of vermiculite in this mix and I generally use vermiculite only
if I'm growing some leafy greens or herbs and they need a lot of water to be
retained in the soil but if you're growing something like root plants you
can skip the vermiculite and go with perlite
and once again what we're going to be doing is adding some water here making
sure that the potting mix is nicely moist and and this also removes the air
pockets and make sure that the soil is well settled down and here is a little
trick that I use to jumpstart my plants and my soil I add some fish fertilizer
or fish emulsion into my soil and what I do is I take two tablespoons
of this fish emulsion and add it to two gallons of this watering can that I'm
going to be using and what happens by doing this is fish
emulsion or fish fertilizer contains a lot of beneficial bacteria and all we do
is we just add some water to this watering can to fill it up apply it on
to our soil the soil that we just created in our container of the
container mix and what this does is it adds a gazillion beneficial bacteria
into the soil that can be very beneficial to your plants now although
you are adding fertilizers you're adding amendments the plants will need to take
up the nutrients and by adding fish fertilizer to this mix you are
increasing microbial activity to a level where it's very easy for the plants to
take up the nutrients and grow well and here you can see all our containers they
look very nice and we are now ready for the next step
our fourth step is to attach the drip emitters and the reason I'm doing this
as the last step is because it's very easy to do you just need some space to
punch a hole in the mainline I'm using this punch tool here and then you need
to use a barbed connector the barbed connector goes between the mainline and
the quarter inch tubing that you see here
and you just push it in you don't need any tools to do this you might struggle
a little bit because the quarter inch tubing is very small but once you push
this in it is pretty solid as far as the contacts go and you can cut this quarter
inch tubing to you the size that you need and I usually like to put at least
two emitters in the whiskey barrel or a wine barrel sized container so I'm going
to be using a tee here this is a barbed Tee and this barbed tee lets me connect two more
quarter inch tubing lines to which I can attach the emitters
so in the next step I'm going to be attaching this quarter inch tubing to
the tee the barbed tee that we attached here
then cut it where you would want the first emitter
that you would do the same thing on the other side you touch it to the barbed Tee and
then make sure that you have enough quarter inch tubing to connect your
emitters and here are our emitters we're going to
be using this fan bubbler which is a great choice for these wine barrels or
whiskey barrels and the reason I like to use them as
because they provide a lot of even watering over a large area
and as you can see here the drip emitters have now been set up you can
secure these further by using garden pins but this is how it looks like it
looks beautiful our containers are now ready for some
planting our final step in our container garden
is to plant our vegetables and in the first container we are going to be
planting our Tomatoes we grew these tomatoes from seeds and they've grown
pretty big now and there would be a perfect fit for these wine barrel or
whiskey barrel containers and this is a cherry tomato variety you can see here
it's grown pretty well and you can plant one plant in each container and the best
part about this wine barrel container or the whiskey barrel container is that the
tomato cage that you see here fits in perfectly in this second container we're
gonna be planting shallots now we got this on sale at Lowe's for a dollar it
was a dollar for one bag and they were of pretty good quality so I picked up
two bags and I'm gonna be sorting this to make sure that we have some really
good quality shallots to begin with discard any that have rot or they just
crumble very easily take the best ones that's the best part about getting these
shallots on sale is that you get to choose the best ones and grow the best
ones
now once you've sorted out the shallots you can place them as you see here they
need to be about four inches apart and then save the rest of that if some of
your shallots don't germinate you can use these spare ones
we're next gonna be planting our pepper plants we have to pepper plants that you
see here we have the California wonder pepper and the poblano pepper both great
pepper varieties to grow in your vegetable garden and in one wine barrel
or a whiskey barrel container you can plant two pepper plants and I have not
had good luck growing pepper plants in Southern California but we'll see how
this goes
next container would be having this ghost pepper variety it is one of the
hottest pepper variety that you can find and I would not recommend growing this
unless you like very hot peppers we're going to be growing cilantro in this
other container that we added vermiculite in for better moisture
retention and you need to scar the seeds or split the seeds as you see here and
this will improve your germination vastly when it comes to cilantro this is
another step that a lot of growers miss doing but this will give you really good
germination rates and your plants will be up very soon and all we're going to
do is make a circle here to some concentric circles and then add the
seeds and the cilantro should grow very quickly
and our container garden is now ready and our plants are growing very well so
I'm sure this should inspire you to start your own container garden soon