In this video, I’ll show you how to grow plants successfully in pots! Whether you’re gardening on a balcony, patio, or small backyard, container gardening is a great way to grow flowers, herbs, vegetables, and more.
🌱 What you’ll learn:
– Choosing alternative successful methods for growing in pots
– Best soil mixes for containers
– Tips for watering and feeding potted plants
– How to avoid common mistakes
Perfect for beginners and urban gardeners!
Don’t forget to like 👍, comment 💬, and subscribe 🔔 for more gardening tips!
#AncientGrowingPractices #kerncounty #gardening
good morning so the the presentation this morning is going to be on um about growing in pots a lot of times um people don’t have enough room in their yard or backyard or front yard or they just want to uh have a large pot instead of a uh what are they called a flower bed or the raised beds because when you have a pot or raised bed or horse trough I use horse troughs um but I’m just going to use a pot as a smaller example of the bigger pots or horse troughs or you know raised beds anyhow uh so it’s been said when I was younger uh I was reading a almanac farmer’s almanac it said to have uh if your plant is $1 while your hole that you’re going to plant it in is going to be $70 to $100 so you’re going to have $1 plant but the soil is going to be a $100 hole so you want the best soil and as we know it’s just a principle i mean uh if you have good soil whether that’s spiritual uh you’re going to have a better crop whether it’s 30fold 60fold or 100fold it’s the soil that you’re going to need and it’s just uh you’re going to need good soil to grow good things and so what I do is um I I I usually have I don’t have a horse trough here to show you but so I get good soil whether it’s you can buy the soil at a nursery or make your own compost i do both because uh if you buy the soil gets kind of expensive but I I use compost and um let that compost into good earth soil and then I also mix it with um bought um soil because uh I don’t have like a whole bunch of compost to work with so sometimes you just got to work with what you got and buying good uh I get the blue ribbon at Bulls Nursery but buying good soil is is pretty good this one already has little perlites in it one thing about um your planting hole you’re going to want soil that’s there’s oxygen and also moisture uh are the some of the most important things and of course uh good organic uh stuff where it’s breaking down and there’s life there’s life that you can’t see but it’s doing its work it’s making that soil good and so uh you’re going to want to get some soil so let’s see here what kind of pot should we use this morning you can use a smaller pot there’s different size pots you can use some people um like I said they don’t have enough room in their yard or house or whatever and they want You might split this 50/50 with your own Yes with my own compost yeah um but if it’s worm compost uh I kind of will put maybe 25 cuz I don’t want to use all my worm compost in one but you know and then as the years go by you can also add your worm compost to it worm compost is another thing that’s pretty great so let’s see here i would just use that and so you’re going to want to what I do when it comes to my horse troughs I want the drainage out of the bottom i don’t want all my soil to come out so sometimes I’ll put either little pebbles on the bottom so that uh it’ll kind of keep the soil in uh without washing all out but I don’t have the pebbles today so we’re just going to fill a pot up as an example and then you know what before I do that there’s something you’re going to want to add your worm castings or whatever kind of good compost you have so uh for this pot I’ll probably just use that much because I don’t want to use all my valuables worm castings and then I’ve I’ve discovered something that a lot of people are are starting to discover now it’s called biochar do you guys know uh when you cook um when you’re having a barbecue outside or a pit deep pit or you know the wood sometimes doesn’t burn all the wood or it it doesn’t turn to ashes it doesn’t it’s just a black piece of wood right you ever pick it up and then break it in half and it’s like just it breaks so easy that’s called char so they’re getting char because they discovered in the Amazon char uh is still activated uh what they use that char for is it absorbs nutrients holds on to it and it um it’s just a plant available for years and years to come and as a plant calls for it it’s there and also it’s a water retention so they’re using biochar now for soil uh just enhancement and it’ll last like at the one in the Amazon 300 years now you’re thinking Amazon that’s a green place that’s always raining there yeah it’s true but when they wanted to um grow their own food all that rain it’s sandy soil it would wash the nutrients out and so they would still have plants but it won’t be that nutrientrich dense so the char uh absorbs the nutrients holds on to it and then they found it in the Amazon 300 years already still active there’s pockets of that char where they use to farm or grow their crops or whatever which is interesting so what I did I discovered from the Japanese a different way to make char i mean they have you can make char out of anything you make it out of bones but mainly wood uh small pieces big pieces whatever well I found that rice holes is a smaller so I won’t have to uh pound on it or break it up because the char you want it to be broken up and ready for your soil well this particular char is rice hole so it’s already tiny little little pieces and what char does is when it’s it called pyrolysis when it’s kind of charred and burned it turns into a carbon and the pores open up so what’s going to happen here i’m going to go ahead and mix it in and as a as a uh um when you’re working in your backyard or whatever or using um your tools make sure you have gloves i don’t care so you know I don’t really use gloves so how did I make the tar rice hole husk rice holes so it’s the husk of the rice that it came in yeah yeah so I found mine at the uh Roundup which was it used to be 13 something then 14 now 15 um they use it for animal bedding but you can use any organic thing to make char and I found that these little things since I don’t have to I don’t have to crush it or anything it’s going to be helpful and what this does is it’ll absorb nutrients so you don’t want to add it to your soil without first charging or activating it well what do you mean Anthony yes charging or activating the char is you put um say like warm tea in here and let it set for about 24 to 48 hours or even longer if you want and so what that’ll do is all those microscopic pores will start absorbing the nutrients and hold on to it because if you put it in without being charged or activated it’s going to rob your soil for a while it’ll come back but it’ll start robbing your plants of their nutrients this year and maybe even next year so you don’t want to wait two years you want to charge it activate it and then add it to your soil and what that’s going to do is it’s going to help your soil uh nutrients last longer because you know we’re always wash we’re always watering our uh what are the raised beds uh pots and what happens is the plants will uptake the nutrients but sometimes a lot of times it’ll be washed out but char is going to be holding on biochar it’s going to be it’s char first but when it’s activated then you call it biochar so the biochar is going to be in there activated and just ready for years and years and years and that’s going to be helpful to your plants you said use tea worm tea which is uh compost uh worm tea which is the leech a lot of times so the leech that comes from the worm tea or you can get um the worm castings put them in a porous bag put them in a bucket and then um some people leave it there to steep and so that way the nutrients leeches into the water then you can put the the nutrient-rich water into your char and soak that for like 48 hours and then you add your char to your and that’s a you can have that as a onetime job now some people um they’ll just buy the char or make the char and they’ll scratch it into the top surface of the four top four inches of your um flower beds but I think if you can get that before you even create your flower beds that’s great you ever heard of hoogal culture hoogle culture so I guess there’s wood underneath the uh flower beds that’s kind of like a sponge and absorbs nutrients however uh through time the wood is going to deteriorate now char it’s already been pyrolysicized so it’s not going to deteriorate that easy they use char in uh absorbing chemicals a lot of times some people even buy little capsules so they can uh um I guess absorb heavy metals out of their body so because it’s so porous and absorbent and uh I think there’s something called cation ion exchange where it’ll uh absorb it and then later on slowly but by the time it’ll release anything you’ve already released the char out of your body anyhow um so yeah so you mix the char with the soil or your favorite worm castings um I usually go half and half with the char and the worm castings and then just put it in there or to be safe if you’re using chemical um fertilizer and you inoculate your char with chemical fertilizer liquid that’ll work but I don’t know how strong it’s going to be so we’re always safe with organic worm leate tea so to be safe if you use chemical only use about 5% of your activated char five to 10% that way your plants won’t burn but if you’re using organic stuff if you accidentally spilled all your worm lee it’s not going to kill your plant yes ma’am if people don’t have the worm castings you don’t have the worm compost can you use regular compost to make your tea and activate it yeah I’m just saying worm because that’s what I have but yeah compost is nutrient-rich it has microorganisms that we can’t see and they’re doing the earth much good they’ll break down stuff and make it more plant soluble all that organic stuff in your compost pile they’re breaking it all down when you put it in your soil it’s more plant uh ready for the plants to absorb all the goodness now guess what if you uh uh add water to that and let that set 48 hours or more and then I’m sorry add water to your uh what I call your compost make a compost tea add it to your char well you’re going to have that for years to come just plant available and ready for your plants and uh I think um there’s some stuff on YouTube that’ll show you the before and after effects of using char uh I always want to play it safe because I’m new at it um if just to use like 5 to 10% they say I think uh up to 25% you know 25% biochar 25% your favorite um compost and then of course the uh other 50 of the soil but I really believe you can grow almost anything in compost I mean that is soil right as long as it’s aged and matured soil so that’s that’s what I’ve been doing with my horse troughs is uh adding the um char now before I got the char which is u um you make it I made it myself i used to use something called zeolyte which is another another um it’s a it’s from the earth and it it’s more expensive though so that’s why I discovered uh thank god I discovered the uh the char uh way to go because the zeolyte you’re going to spend a lot of money and it it does the same thing like the char and I was talking about there’s something a certain cat litter that actually absorbs u the u you know stuff the bad stuff and the odors well that’s what char does too and that’s what zeolyte does too so anything with cation ion uh that would absorb um I I believe they make filters with char filters with zeolyte you can also buy zeolyte and take it in internally but anyway that’s any questions about char before uh I go on where did you buy it the char I made it so but the organic material that I use is called rice husks or rice hole uh they sell it at Roundup uh it’s like a tractor supply I guess where you can buy chickens and then uh Roseale Highway yeah right off of Rosedale Highway and uh that stuff’s uh it’s available there yeah if you want to go rice husk with a rice husk you going to tell them how you made your char yeah so I couldn’t buy this i was looking on there and the Japanese have this cone shaped metal with holes and then a a tunnel coming up like a metal tunnel and then uh so they put some fire underneath like you know burnt wood on fire and they put the cone on top and then they put the rice coals all the way around and what’s going on is that the heat of it is coming out the tunnel but at the same time it’s like a five hour burn the the horizon husks are burning are cooking and they’re becoming uh they’re they’re usually uh about yellowish or beige well they turn into a not ash but they turn into char after about 5 hours so I guess it I think it just uh cooks without oxygen so it doesn’t really burn the organic matter of the husks it just cooks it without burning it to ashes so you don’t want ashes want the char of the matter so some people are buying this uh wood char that you barbecue with and it’s already cooked for you so if you don’t want to do that job that I do just go buy the whole big old briquette bag of wood brickettes of course and that’s char it’s all you’ll look on it it’ll say all natural 100% oak or whatever well that’s your char ready you just got to crush it this one this one you don’t have to crush it but you got to cook it or you know so you’ve got this cone So I couldn’t find it on Amazon because it’s way in Japan and I was taking pictures putting on Google i said “Man I’m just going to see if I can Mickey this up and make one.” So I I I saw a barbecue chimney where you can put the coals in put the fire on the bottom and cook so I got that it had a lot of the already the holes and then I had gotten these uh tin cans that hold tomatoes or whatever and so when I was done with the ten cans I got about two or three of them and crimped them and then made a little chimney and put that right on top of the barbecue uh chimney and then uh and I kind of like dig a little hole put my burning uh briquettes in there and then I put the chimney on top and I put all the rice hus so yeah um do you have to mix up the rice to keep it next to the fire the hot thing so when it’s next to the hot thing it’s cooking um yes you kind of mix it up with the shovel and you kind of like uh fluff it up and then you’ll see oh it’s black so you keep mixing it and it keeps getting blacker and blacker as the hours go by and you mix it yeah you you can mix it about five times if you want you just want to turn it and make sure the other parts are getting cooked i mean eventually it’ll get cooked but if you want it to cook faster and then once it’s time to put it out you you better make sure that you uh soak it pretty good with the wa with the water because um if you don’t I made the mistake and it smoldered overnight it was all ashes that’s all all this work and they to Yeah so yes ma’am when you when you did the tower you said you used briquettes for your fire yeah uh you can use uh wood briquettes i I had the wood kind of Okay of barbecue char okay in the bag so the big ones in your fire yeah and it’s weird cuz it never burns out i don’t know how because as it’s burning it’s sucking in I don’t know what it’s sucking in oxygen and then it’s coming out the the tunnel and for 5 hours I mean the briquettes would have been burnt down already so but for some reason it just keeps going and going and going i don’t know what’s going on maybe the lack of oxygen or something or it’s just going out the top i still got a lot to learn about it i just know the char biochar works and so if you have a raised bed and you already have things in it you want to incorporate some of that can you just stir some of that in yeah yeah a lot of people just stir in the four to five inches the top they just kind of scratch it in yeah yeah because your bed’s already made now uh if you really wanted to you can uh dig around and then put some char in there and you know mix it up if you want soil you know what yeah yeah exactly because soil eventually is going to uh you’re always going to add soil i notice I have to add soil to my giant uh pots but this right here eventually the more I add of the biochar I will add less and less soil because it’s going to uh become one with the soil and last a whole long lot longer than uh So has have these pots been prepared in that way no some of them have i think on my celebrity tomatoes I I did that and it was still in an experimental stage so I wasn’t sure on how much to use and stuff but uh I still did it because a lot of times if I learn something I mean I don’t know everything but I say “Oo this sounds good.” I just jump right on it and of course me you know trial and error you know stuff happens oh darn now I got to redo it a different way or you know I just all these different ideas other people they learn first and they do it right i do it like I learn as I go so I can I have a lot of you know but yeah but to be safe if you want to be safe with the biochar just use from five to 10% um but truly I can use I can use half uh I could use 25% and then 25% your favorite compost and then also your 50% soil and that should work but yeah uh let’s see what else so oh another thing I wanted to share share is so see all the plants here i mean they don’t look so bad right so what happens is um you can’t be I mean you can if you wanted but uh pots dry out and these are in the middle of the sun the pots so what happens is I just get the whole uh pot uh the all the pots and I put them in like a what’s it called like a um a water holder um a tray and then I fill the tray up that way it gives me 3 to 4 days of I don’t have to go out and water it cuz the pot will actually suck the soil will suck the water up and you’re not drowning your your plants and you’re it’s not drying out as fast so it just keeps sucking the water up as needed into your pots and that’s how I that’s how I grow the uh startlings here because it’s just a lot of work if you went out and hand watered all the time and so you just whatever level you want if you have tomatoes it’s going to take more water so you might want to fill the the thing right about there but other vegetables just about half of this you have problems with mosquitoes uh I have problems when I didn’t even do this but yeah I’ll I’ll admit I have problems before I ever started uh this kind of thing and we still have mosquitoes and I think um there’s less mosquitoes this year for some reason like Barb was saying maybe they sprayed or what have you but I do use the uh just in case I don’t want a whole lot i use the uh the throneensis uh basillusensis and that’s a uh something you can get from Tractor Supply it’s little uh pebbles or the donuts and then you can like what I do is I get a separate bucket a white one or one of these fill it with water and just put the thermogenesis in there and hopefully like the pill bugs they all go to that and then die instead of uh each you know plant so yeah and sometimes I’ll put them in there because it’s not going to hurt your plants or animals that they’re in Genenses basillus and Genenses lavender some lavender lavender oh I have lavender and I had too much it grew it grew too much so I had to take some out so and the bees love it too do the bees love it too they love lavender that’s for sure okay yeah well um I just know it keeps the mosquitoes away and that was something that they they learned through time you know because of what happened during the plague i think that basically covered most of the stuff i mean of course when you’re first doing a plant um your first planting you get you mix it all up and then put your soil in there and you’re going to water from water from the top and go ahead and water it on top first and then if you do have the starts in a uh a water holder tray then you can water from the bottom after that but um yeah any any other questions where did you find those little round um are they like oil pan type i think they’re like animal uh animal food tray or water yeah tractor supply for They used to be $7 they may they may have went up but yeah yeah I use them for plants and then the plants that you have underneath you what are those for the Yeah the plants are you guys to take home or whatever plants you want we have some fig trees we have uh shashidto peppers anybody ever have shashidito peppers those are abundant and so they’re from Japan and a lot of the gourmet restaurants are sautéing them now and so uh when they start growing they’re going to be green sauté them up with uh some oil not olive oil because that kind of I think uh maybe avocado oil and some sea salt and that’s about it you can even add some uh soy sauce if you want but yeah spicy uh they’re not spicy so one out of every 10 you’re going to get one that’s kind of spicy all the other ones it’s uh not going to be spicy yeah it’s interesting um yeah so the plants here to take home and uh any any other questions did you name all the plants uh most of them have names on them okay yeah the uh the tomatoes this time are not um celebrity they’re champion tomatoes over here anybody want celebrity oh great and then we have like a fig yep and there’s some fig trees in there if anybody wants a fig tree on Anony’s figs just FYI if you get big fig you got a big tree you got a lot lot of leaves take two or three of those leaves and cut them up and boil them for 10 minutes and steep them for 10 minutes and it makes a wonderful tea add some ice and it’s a very refreshing tea and it adds in some magnesium and minerals to your body that you wouldn’t normally have so if you want a nice little little the big leaves are fabulous that’s interesting with the leaves like you do with the stems okay that’s great cuz you know when you pop open the stem there’s that white milk no I just I when I pick the leaf you know this big leaf I just break off the stem at the leaf and I just cut them up or rip them up and put them in the pot thanks for that make sure you make sure you uh boil it with the lid on it for 10 minutes turn it off let it steep for 10 and then add ice or whatever you know if you want honey or lemon or whatever make it taste good very nice tea yeah it probably doesn’t taste all that great but if you mix it with another Oh it does okay well great to that she She gets to be a guinea pig all the time too hey I’ve got a new tea for you anything else thank you thank you question quickly worms you do you ever have a worm farm i have a separate trough for worms yeah yeah where’d you get your worms up the first uh starter worms are the red wigler worms that I get i think it’s a Bins i don’t know if it’s Uncle Ben or Ben’s worm farm online if you look it up it’ll be a guy with a hat and some glasses and And I forgot to share anytime you’re working outside you’re going to want you’re going to want to put a hat on so that um you know you can uh preserve your skin and you won’t look like leather after you’re 55 or whatever a quick one on your worms that I saw i haven’t tried it yet but the guy was talking about he went to he went to his local fishing store and bought some worms there because he got he got a container that had 30 worms in it for five bucks nice and he was saying if you buy them at the fishing store they’re using them they’re alive for fishing versus if you do like like your cuz I was looking at getting some worms and it was like you got 50 worms for I think it was $39 oh that’s too much you can get They’re different worms okay what the red worms only The red worms are top feeders and the earthworms which is the nightcrawlers they go lower um but they’ll the the bait shops will show you both the only thing is um you’re only getting 30 but then through time they’ll multiply in the right conditions now I bought the whole uh $70 $69 one and you get 2,000 worms in a thing and you put in there and they they start you know they start their habitat but yeah
1 Comment
This was pretty cool Bro, I’m gonna share this with Violet, she likes planting👍🙏