Container Gardening 101 with Rafash Brew + Sheba Roy
No yard? No problem! Learn how to grow your own fruits and veggies right from a container — perfect for apartment living or limited space.
Brought to you by the Acres Home Chamber Farmers Market, happening every 1st and 3rd Saturday in Acres Home. Come grow with us!
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So, we’re here at the Acres Chamber Farmers Market and myself and our expert, Mr. Brew. We are going to learn, What are we going to learn today? Well, we’re going to do some different potting exercises. First thing today, mid-March, we’ll try and start some vegetable seed. We’ll particularly be starting that with some watermelon. Particularly today is March 15th. Uh we got a starbrite watermelon that matures in about 85 90 days. If we started to see today proper growing conditions, we’ll have watermelon before the 4th of July. Okay? And then you get better prices at that point. Okay? And I think one other big thing, we’ve got some pepper here, we’ve got some lettuce, we got some mustard, the collar seed. Biggest thing I wanted to focus on right here was the seed size. Okay? And look at depth of planting. If you look at the seed size of watermelon as a compo opposed to lettuce, you plant a seed based on it seed size. So you plant a seed half seed size. So if we would say watermelon on this table would be planted the deepest and then maybe the the bell pepper seed and then maybe the mustard or turnip and then of course the smallest is the lettuce. So, you’re saying that the larger the seed, the deeper it should be planted? Yes. Okay. If we take a too small of a seed, we could plant it too deep and it burns up all this energy just to come up. Oh, this little one inch and then by the time it gets to the top, it’s burned out. Okay, that makes sense. And then looking at these trays, this is a 72count seed tray. This here is something that supports it. You can move it around. You can move it into the house when it’s cold. If it had be a lake cold spell. This particular piece here, it doesn’t let any water out. So, if you’re going to be gone a couple of days, you might want to add the water and let that water sit on it. Okay? It But don’t don’t overdo it because you can rot your seed. But they sell these here now. Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and it’s very easy to do. Here is a pretty much a nice little well drained soil. Okay. And then I tend to just push it over here. So you don’t have to do it pretty. You just get it in there. Uh this is a little bit prettier than if you try to scoop it out of the bag. Yeah. So if you just pour this on the top. Uhhuh. And then I guess the only thing about it I guess you get a little soil on your hands. Yeah. Which is fine. Get your hands dirty. But that’s something that gets kids involved with. Absolutely. So then it’s all nice and and level. Okay. Uh how much does one of these cost? I’ve been seeing these here for about5 or $6. Okay. Okay. So you got the whole set and and so like where could we go to buy one? Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, places like that. Different garden centers, nursery garden centers. Okay. And then you could even try online. Okay. Um so then next once we’ve got it, we would we’re looking to plant some watermelon today. So you could just make a tiny hole here. You might have to be careful that you don’t go too deep. And then we just said half the seed size. Okay. Half the seed size. So, I’ll place a seed there. Today, I’mma only place one of these. You could do two. But I’mma just use one. And then you just cover. Okay. If you if you’re done planting, if you can see the seed, you didn’t plant it deep enough or you didn’t put enough on top. Okay. Okay. So, it needs to be completely covered, right? Okay. However, if we switch gears here, moving fast to lettuce seed, we would say we don’t have to dig a hole, okay? Or we don’t have to poke a hole. We could just sprinkle on top. Oh, that’s too many. Okay. So, what happens if you do too many? And so, well, it’s about like you if uh somebody get in your space. Oh, okay. You know, don’t cry at me, man. Yeah. So, then you got so many in here, it’s not enough space, they don’t grow off well. Okay. But sometimes you can take these here and then you could pull them apart and you can use them somewhere else. Something real tiny like the lettuce seed, you might tend to just cover it. Okay. So just sprinkle it on top and then a light layer on top of it. Right. Okay. In water. So same idea for this. What did you say this was? This is like a mustard turnup. Okay. So you could do the same thing here, but not too deep, right? You just put them put one there, okay? And then cover it. Okay. In many instances on mustard seed, you can just take the the seed and broadcast it in the field and it’ll grow. Okay. Okay. Good. And then water. Okay. So, how much water? No packing. No packing. Okay. So, I just want to brush. You just want to make it you do good is if you had your soil wet before you placed it there and once you put your seed you just kind of lightly wet it. Okay? And then if you’ve got more of these trays to do never stack another tray on top of it cuz that will suffocate. That’s what packs it. Okay. So in other words, you don’t have to go pack it down. You when you put your water on, that’s what packs it. See, I think that’s probably where I messed up the last time I tried to plant something was I was really packing it down because I didn’t know any better, you know, but that’s why we’re doing this so that we can learn how to to plant those kinds of seeds. Uh nice little well drained soil. Okay, again, I guess some we talked we’ve talked about having good soils here before. If you notice the particle size, no big pieces of wood. Here’s a piece here. That’s a pretty good size piece of wood, but you hope you don’t have anything like that. Oh, the particle size. The smaller the particle size, the more d well drain the soil and more porocity. Okay. Uh, this is a container here. I like this little whiskey basket. Yeah. And what we looking at when we start to grow things in containers, I like to fill them to the top. Okay. If you don’t fill them to the top and then you got a plant down in here, you blocking sunlight and shade from it. Okay. Uh I’ve got a plant here. Okay, this is called verbena. Actually, Dallas red verbina. Okay. And then you could take this like a tree as well. If you had a tree in a pot this size, you plant it the same depth that came inside the container. Okay. So on this case here, we would simply Oh, you removing it. Okay. Yes. I’m going to take it from the pot. It’s ready to go from the pot. You see the roots are nice and filled there, but I want the soil level right here. Okay. So, I might move just a little bit. If you notice right here, pretty much the soil line is right even with this contain the top of this container. And then from there, we just want to fill it and all the way to the top. All the way to the top. It just doesn’t look good with just a little bit of soil in there. Because you can put it to the top because when you’re done, it’s going to settle when you start watering it. Yeah. So, this here is verbina. Okay. Really tough plant. It’s perennial in nature, meaning that it comes back year after year after year. I did um well, I thought I killed one that I got from him before, but I guess it probably wasn’t dead. I just ended up somebody threw it away. So, cuz it looked dead. This is something you don’t have to take in in the cold weather. Okay. And then you can leave it in full sun in the summertime in the shade. It won’t bloom as as it much as it will in in full sun. So, you need to let this act like it lives outside for real. This lives outside for real. Okay. Now, then we got this little red flower here. However, we could mix a a vegetable in here. Give me some pepper. So, basically what we want to do is bell pepper. Okay. Uh this is California Wonder. Okay. So, it’s a yellow bell pepper or gold in nature. You could just place one seed here, a couple here. I would do the four corners. How many seeds to go in each one? Just one, maybe two. Try two. Okay. Cover. And then cover. Uh-huh. That’s enough space there between the two. Okay. So, they’ll be okay as long as. And then we’ll try this end. Okay. And just two on each corner essentially. Oh, that’s too deep. You said like a a baby hole. Yeah. Just sprinkle pop. Oh, look at the ladybug. Just pop one right there and then cover. Wait. Right here. Yeah, you could just do that. Okay. Keep going. And then another one. Uh-huh. So, I could really essentially I could put these all over as long as they not suffocating each other. Yeah. Okay. Maybe six inches between them. Okay. Okay. At the closest I might will try the four corners and maybe here, but then here is going to give it a bunch of competition. Might try that one. Okay. And so, and then on the porch or whatever patio, this will be the front and then that’ll be back. It that grows up. Okay. So, Oh, I think that one is too deep. We going to see what happens. Let’s see. So that’s pretty much we got It just looks better if you fill it to the top. Okay. So how often should I water it? Just casually if it’s going to be outside. In Houston, you know, it gets 100 105. Sometimes you can water it every day. Okay. Right now, every other day you should be fine. If you get a good rain, you might not need to water it. And what about in this container like this? We want to wet this every day. Okay. So we’re at March 15th. We hope we can go into the field with this by April 7th. So for three weeks, you going to kind of hit this daily. Okay. So where should I leave it? Uh on the patio full sun. Okay. We’ll find somewhere here for me to put it so we can monitor it. I’ll take this one home. Okay. Good. We have some bell peppers. We didn’t put any any in the center. You want Okay. Give it a shot. Go ahead. Start on this end. Okay. So, you know, on that side we put those watermelons. Yeah. We’ll make a tag. Okay. Watermelons. Whereas in these two, this was the lettuce. So, now I’m messing it up. I got too many peppers. Pepper seeds in here. Okay. I’m just, you know, I’m not an expert. I’m doing the best that I can. No, but that that makes an expert. That’s true. So, for the people watching, do you guys plant a lot? Yeah. Do you think this was good information? Yeah. I don’t know. My fingernails are just long. Crazy. Yeah, I can do that. Here. What you do? Just drop the seed and then come back. Oh, and then cover. Then come back and cover. You’re right. Cuz I’m making it difficult for myself. Okay. And then you see that gold and you know it’s it’s trying to do something. Yeah. Well, y’all, you know, you got to cover it. I’m going to be selling peppers at the market soon. Be like, shea got them golden peppers. You know what though? I recently I Oh, I’m packing it too tight. He just said don’t do that. Did you want more watermelon in that? Um, yeah, that’s fine. I lost my tanks. Okay. Well, watermelon was on that side. No, I thought watermelon. No, he put the lettuce on that side. We got it on the video, right? Huh? Okay. So, we can go back and look if we need to. Well, thank you so much, Brew. Okay, then we had anything here. I put the uh peppers right here.