Turn Your Porch into a Grocery Store! (Simple Container Gardening)

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There’s a movement sweeping the globe. People are stepping back from their fast-paced, convenience-driven lives and are really wanting to learn how to take part once again in growing food and enjoying this beautiful planet of ours. There’s only one problem. Not everyone has access to land that they can till and turn into a garden or a food forest. But something that many of us do have is a small balcony or porch or even a sunny window sill. I’ve always lived in the country. I grew up on a farm where my parents taught me to garden and take care of animals. But one thing I hear over and over again is, “I can’t do what you’re doing because I don’t have land.” So this year, I decided that on top of my other gardening, I’m going to turn my porch into a garden and learn all the tricks of container gardening right alongside all of you. I’m a firm believer in the fact that you don’t have to live in the country to be a homesteader. The spirit of homesteading is doing what you can with what you have. [Music] This is my first real harvest from our gardens this year. So, this is super super fun and exciting. I have some plans for this rhubarb. The first thing I make every year is these delicious rhubarb muffins with like a cinnamon crunch on top. So, I’m going to wash this stuff up and chop it. This can be a little bit difficult to chop because it’s kind of fibrous. So, I’m going to chop this stuff and then I’m going to have Tiraza make some muffins sometime today. Asparagus really likes to be kept in water like you would cut flowers. Asparagus that is stored like this will last a long time. It’ll last for around a week and a half. So, if you have a whole bunch all at once and you can’t get it all eaten, this works beautifully. [Music] Rhubarb is one of those foods that you kind of either love it or hate it. It’s very sour and like the flavor kind of grows on you. It’s very, very earthy. It’s a very old-fashioned flavor. I think it’s really delicious, but I will say when you’re making desserts with it, you have to use a lot of sugar to make it palatable, but we just eat it in the spring. I don’t do a ton of preserving with this, except I do make strawberry rhubarb jam. Strawberry rhubarb jam is amazing. You do want to chop this like super fine if you use it in muffins and stuff because it can be kind of I don’t know, you don’t want to bite into too big of a chunk of something sour. I have been excited for today for a very long time now. Actually, I’ve been looking forward to it all of last week and this week. So, today is finally warm enough to plant out stuff in my container garden. So, that’s kind of my biggest job for today. I also have a few like herbs and seedlings that I want to put out into my raised beds. My growite is having some issues this year and so my seedlings are not doing very great inside. So, I just want to get those out and out of my hair. Cody also has some exciting work to do with the bees. He’s going to be hanging a swarm trap so that we can hopefully catch some swarms for more beehives. And I also really really badly have to work in my strawberry patch. So last year I looked in my phone and we were getting strawberries in May, which is coming right up. And so the strawberry patch needs a lot of work. [Music] I have a couple things that I want to do out here this morning. I think I’m going to put my seedlings out in my garden before I start working on the containers. But I really want to get this soil nice and damp. So, I’m going to fill this up and let this start selfwatering. Kind of see how it works. I do not like planting into completely dry soil. [Music] I have some herb seedlings here and I’m going to get my herb garden started for this year. I’m really excited. One of the perks of no till gardening is that when things reed, you don’t mess it up by tilling in the spring. So, these were volunteers. These are volunteers. And you can see there’s a bunch of other little chamomile shoots coming up. There’s so much chamomile out here already that I think I’m going to save these for my herb basket that I’m going to do on the porch. I’m just going to plant one pack of the chamomile and then I’m going to plant these kindal flowers. Last year I had kindula flowers running out of my ears, so I’m not going to do quite as many of those this [Music] year. I ran out of chamomile tea this year. Chamomile tea is one of my favorite teas to drink before bed. So, I just really wanted to make sure I have enough of it this year. A lot of the problem is keeping it harvested. It’s pretty tedious to harvest, but it’s so worth it. So, I might have to get my kids to harvest some of it this year. My oregano is coming back nice and strong. My sage is looking amazing. And this this echynia is looking really good. One of my friends told me, she was like, um, rosemary is not a perennial. And I was like, oh. So the rosemary obviously did not come back, but the lavender the lavender is looking good. I think I’m just going to do my colundula in this area here just because that’s what’s open. I’m not worried about um making sure that I switch places with stuff like this. it’s not as big of a deal because there really is no diseases for herbs. One thing that I was taught is that when you are pulling your little seedlings out of their pots, you just want to tear off the bottom roots like this a little bit. It just helps to loosen things up, stimulate the root system, give them a nice start. Another thing that you want to be very, very sure to do is that if you start your seedlings inside, you want to go through a process called hardening off. Partoning off is just simply taking your seedling trays and just setting them outside in kind of like a a shaded spot that’s just a little bit breezy, nothing too harsh, but you’re wanting to get them used to the outdoors. You want to get them acclimated. If you don’t do that, if you put them out in direct sun like this, they are just going to die. I have done that before. I was like, “Oh, I bet hardening off isn’t that important.” Trust me, it is. [Music] Always, always water in your seedlings. Always, always, always water in your seedlings. One thing that I always, always, always do when I’m planting, I always, always, always water in seeds. I’m definitely going to get a couple fresh herbs this year to put in here. I do really want to try loilia that did not germinate for me. I had a feeling those teeny tiny little seeds might not germinate and they didn’t. So, I am going to hopefully find some of that at the greenhouse. I don’t know if they have it or not. We had a lot of people asking us where we got where we get these containers. Honestly, I don’t remember. It was quite a few years back. They’re basically semi transparent. You really want to make so that sunlight can get through. You want to have ventilation holes. And yes, you can use milk jugs. You can use vinegar cans and stuff, but one thing I didn’t like as much about those is that the base of them was pretty narrow. And so, you don’t want the leaves of your plants touching the sides because they get kind of burned. These just kind of showed up and were perfect. So, we got a whole bunch of them. I usually just leave these on for I don’t know a week or two just so that the plants have just a little bit of extra protection while they get established. This is something my mom always did and she swore by [Music] it. That’s scary. When I was a kid, my mom always thought it was necessary to spring clean the house from top to bottom. We cleaned out cupboards and drawers and we washed walls. So, it’s in my blood whenever this time of the year comes around. I always feel like everything has to be really clean. But this year, I kind of feel like I’m going beyond just clean. And I’m really trying to rid my home of toxins. I went and got a whole bunch of 100% cotton blankets to replace all of our I call them plastic blankets. The kids love them, but I can’t stand them. They’re the ones that get all staticky in the dryer. They’re like 100% polyester or acrylic or microfiber. I’ve also been trying to rid our home of polyester clothing like basketball shorts that are like the slippery athletic fabrics. We are so honored to have Birch Living as the sponsor of today’s video. Birch Living makes these beautiful fiberglass free mattresses that are crafted with responsibly sourced organic cotton, organic wool, and 100% natural latex. Their mattresses are also free from polyurethane foams which cause a lot of unhealthy offging. We’ve been sleeping on this birch mattress now for over a year and I genuinely love it. I’m not just saying that. I would stick this thing in my suitcase and take it on trips with me if I could. I sleep so much better on this mattress than I did before. It’s really, really soft. Cody even noticed that I was sleeping harder and not actually waking up as much during the night when we switched to our Birch mattress. I also really love the peace of mind that comes with knowing that the mattress I’m spending half of my life on is not full of toxins. When you buy your Birch mattress, you get a 100 night sleep trial, which is around 3 months to make sure that you really love it. It gets shipped straight to your front door. It’s really easy to set up. So, go to birchliving.com/thanfarmers to start sleeping better today and to get 20% off of your purchase. [Music] They look really good. Tears did a good job. Yummy. This is free. But I made this soap yesterday with tallow. You can see here, these are the colundula petals on top. I think they are so incredibly beautiful. So proud of them. I used turmeric for the orange swirl. I got two apple mint plants at the greenhouse yesterday. More like Cody picked them up for me. These are absolutely beautiful. This is our favorite all-time favorite tea. Sorry. I’m going to save one of these for a hanging basket. I thought it would be so cool. I don’t know how exactly tea will act in a hanging basket, but I can kind of picture it like draping over the sides. I think that would be super cool. And I also know that it’s something that a lot of people want to grow on their porch. So, I’m going to try this one out for you guys on the porch. And then I’m also going to plant one out in that bin that we prepared a couple videos back. [Music] So, for those of you who are new here, the reason that we sank these tubs to plant our tea into is just so that it keeps it contained because tea will spread everywhere and it can become very invasive if you don’t have it in [Music] something. It’s pretty epic. I’ve got two beehives that still have bees in it that made it over the winter. So, I’m really excited about that. But, I’ve got a third one that’s empty. So, I’m hoping to catch So, I’m hoping to catch at least one swarm this year. I’m going to set this one up in my back pasture. Yesterday, I set one up at my in-laws and I’ve caught swarms there before. So, hopefully I’ll get at least one. And if I get another one, maybe I’ll just have to build another hive. [Music] I’m not really sure if this fence is shocking or not. The fencer is a solar fencer and it’s all the way out down to the other end. I don’t feel like going down there and I don’t feel like touching it to find out. I made this swarm trap really easy to put up in the tree. So, the one that I set up yesterday, I used a ratchet trap ratchet strap to strap it to the tree. This I put these little conduit holders on the back. And last year, the year before, I screwed a board onto the tree with a pipe. So, I can just stick it up there and slide the pipe through and it’s it’s on. It’s good. This swarm trap is pretty simple. Just a plywood box with six frames in it. The same size of frames that goes into my horizontal hives. And then it’s got some lemongrass essential oil in it. That’s supposed to be about the same scent as what they’re I don’t know, something to do with something that attracts them when they’re looking for a new home. I did catch a swarm in this trap last year, but I let it go too long and by the time I came back here to get it, they were gone again. Just because this is easier doesn’t mean it’s easy. Now all we do is wait. Come out here and check it every once in a while. This pasture back here, the grass is growing pretty nice. The cows are eating down the grass up front. So I really should put them back here, but then we couldn’t see the cows up front by the house. So I’m a little torn, but I probably should just put them back here so they eat this grass down. In our last video, we got these planters set up. These were sent to us by a couple different companies. Greentock sent us that. BGO garden sent us this raised bed and this tomato planter with a trellis. We’ve got stuff that we’re ready to plant in these two. And we got some new stuff. You remember in our last one, we got some 5gallon grow bags that we were going to plant potatoes in, but those were very much too small. So, we got some 15gon ones. This is pretty big. I think we’ll be able to put at least four tomatoes in each one. Got five bags here. These were pretty cheap. This is definitely an inexpensive way to do container gardening on your pork. And then we also got a couple containers. I just got these from Walmart. They were cheap. They’re actually selfwatering. So for like 10 bucks a piece for a 5gallon container like this. That was a really good price. And you just put the water in the side. It goes down in the bottom and it’s supposed to selfwater. This is for something extra fun that we’ll show you in a little bit. We’re also going to put up a couple hanging baskets. Probably one here and maybe one up there. And those will be pretty cool. I ordered those. Those aren’t here yet. I think they’re supposed to come tomorrow. So, we won’t be able to plant anything in them today, but hopefully we’ll have them for our next video. So, this is like a very much a continuing process. Okay, I think I know. I think I have the seeds I want to plant today. So, before I get started with the planting, I just want to give a big giant disclaimer. I actually know that my seedlings look pretty bad. They look terrible. I mean, the tomato plants look like I beat them. I didn’t. They are really struggling. I’m literally kicking myself. I don’t know why I didn’t replace my grow light this year. Last year I knew that my seedlings weren’t as nice as they could have been. I fully knew that and I just I’m trying to remember what I was thinking when I thought that I could do the same thing with better results this year. So after doing some research, we did figure out our grow light should have been replaced a long time ago. In my defense, last week we got very distracted with something important. Life happened. I left these out in the sun too long and they got burnt and so they have some crispy spots on them. It’s just like a complete fail. So, I’m gonna apologize once for my poor looking seedlings and then I’m just going to leave it. I’m not going to say anything else about it. That is one of the tricky things with gardening is that you are working with something that is alive. There is not just a specific formula for gardening. You have to deal with plants as though they are living, changing, breathing things and stuff comes up. I’ve been growing seedlings now for 10 years, and this is the absolute worst batch of seedlings. This is the worst batch of seedlings I have ever put out. My peppers don’t look bad. My herbs didn’t look bad, but the tomatoes just didn’t love the light. And so, I just have to roll with it. Learn from my mistake. I’ll get a new grow light next year. I’ll have beautiful seedlings again. It just is what it is. So, be kind to yourself. Be more patient with yourself than I was with these seedlings. This is the one that I’m going to want to be planting in here. These look just absolutely terrible. But what I’m going to do is I’m just going to bury it all the way up to here and it’s going to be fine. I’ll put some fertilizer in there. It will be fine. But just for the record, I don’t necessarily recommend that you use poor looking seedlings because it can definitely have an effect down the road. But I’m going to baby these. They’ll be fine. this container here from VGO Garden. Honestly, it was probably the container that I’m the most excited about, I think, just because it’s so different and unique. I’ve never seen a pot like this. It actually has a trellus attached with it. It’s just so handy. Right here is a little slot where you can put water in. This gauge here will tell you how full to make it. And then, I think if I’m correct, the roots will suck up the water from the bottom. This bag is something that we were given at Homesteaders of America last year by the Mindful Farmer. I’m super excited about it. It’s worm castings. I have never used worm castings as fertilizer before. I have just like made sure that in my garden I have lots of worms that I make a nice environment for them to be. So, this is definitely going to be something new for me. Just smells like dirt. It’s very wet. Interesting. With containers, you do definitely have to be very mindful about fertilizing from what I read. Anyways, a lot of water. When you water your plants and it drains out the bottom, it’s going to pull nutrients out with it. These tomatoes are called sweet pea currant and they are supposedly the size of a pee. The tomatoes are the size of a pee. I find that incredibly fascinating. I cannot wait to see. I did say I’m not going to apologize again about my seedlings, right? I really want to apologize again for this seedling. I’m going to bury this guy really deep and just have the top sticking out. [Music] Hopefully, it will have a better life out here than it did inside. Am I the only person that gets claustrophobic with dirt in my fingernails? We took a lunch break, a nat break, and a matcha break. And now we’re back. And I’m soaking these oyas. Oya. Oya. These oyas. We also had a large discussion about how to say this. Oya in Dutch means eggs. And so that’s all that I can think when I say oya. And he says I’m saying it wrong. I don’t know how to say it right. I’m just trying. Oya. Okay. Oya. You’re supposed to soak these before you put them into the soil and then you just keep these things filled up. And from a lot of the things that I saw people saying online, I’ve never actually had experience with these, so don’t take this off of me. But what I saw from people online was that these like you still have to water a little bit, but these will just keep the soil from completely drying out, which can be a godsend if you know anything about container gardening. I know enough about starting seedlings inside that like all of a sudden they’re bone dry and your plants just like go limp. Do you have a knife? What would I do without my boys and their knives? Okay, I’m going to top dress this quite heavily with some incredil. I get this at Yon’s greenhouse. I have no idea if you can get it online. [Music] Now I’m going to do some worm castings just for a little extra punch. I’ve literally been looking forward to this for weeks. Okay, in this planter here, I’m just going to kind of have fun and kind of do whatever I feel like. I’m going to try planting some of these things in the green stock. And so I might put like two of these little broccoli in here and two of them in the green stock. I just kind of want to get a comparison like what does best where. I’m also going to plant some of these onions. These are the ones that didn’t do quite as well for me. And I thought I could have these up here for some green onions for salads and stuff. So, I won’t be expecting to these to get like huge for storage onions cuz storage onions, you want them in full sun. These will just be yummy for salads. And then these are some beautiful purple Chinese cabbage. And I’m going to do a couple of these in here and then a couple in my green stock. [Music] Crow little guy. Sick and tired of the night in the city. Hey, [Music] darling. We could get out of town. Some col Robbie right here. Cody basically doesn’t like anything that I’m planting in this bed. Get in that [Music] car. Leave a little note and we’ll drive. These are really good root development. [Music] Yeah, [Music] pretty baby. radishes right in here. Okay, I’m going to do a little bit of red Russian kale. The rest is going to be some lettuce. I’m definitely not going to have enough stuff to fill this whole thing up. What I basically decided to do is like I was just too overwhelmed with the thought of trying to plan out every single hole on this planter. So, what I’m going to do is I’m just going to fill in what I have on hand and then I will just decide once I’m done how to fill in the rest. So, we filled this thing up here and we have had this thing selfwatering for a while just to get the soil nice and damp. I think we’re just ready to put incredil and worm castings on top and plant directly into it. We did have to cap these off quite a bit because the soil really settled after it was watered. So, keep that in mind when you’re filling it up. I do think that it would be easier to plant these with this thing disassembled, but I also think that this works super well. Hey darling, you know we’re going to have a really good time driving in the middle. Okay, I’m going to try some radishes in this pocket. I’m going to chew two spaces full of the red Russian kale because I really like this kale. I’m not necessarily marking these. I’m just putting tags in so that I know which spaces have something in them. [Music] This is some kabi. There’s so many things that I could be planting in these little pockets. But the problem is is that I really have to think about the amount of shade that these are going to get. There just is not going to be much sun up here on this porch. So, I’m going to have to stick with things that love some shade. So, if you’re thinking, “Oh, you should put strawberries in here. It would be super fun.” But they’re not going to do well up here. I can almost guarantee it. Let’s get out. Let’s drive to the open. For the next stuff, we’re going to plant. We’re going to go to a different spot. At first, we had in our heads that we were going to do everything on the front porch up there. We started noticing that there’s not quite as much sunlight as we thought there might be up there. And we were talking over lunch and I was like, well, we have our back patio, so why don’t we plant some stuff back there? I think that’s going to work really well for a couple of these things. this these two special pots here that we’ve got some plants for. And then our grow bags for the potatoes and sweet potatoes. What was the other thing? And peas. So, we’re going to put a few grow bags back here. And I think it’ll work really well because these can just sit on the gravel and it’ll be able to drain nicely on top of the gravel. This will get more sunlight back here. Also, once the leaves are on the trees, it’ll shade it out a little bit, but this is still going to get more sunlight than the front porch will that’s completely covered by a roof. We’ll put the white potatoes down here. And for this one, I’m only going to fill it about halfway up. And we’ll plant the potatoes in there. And then as they start growing, we’ll put dirt in on top of it. Same idea as hilling them in the regular garden. Well, we ran out of soil and we’re not going to plant sweet potatoes right away. So, I think I’m going to steal from here so we can finish filling these up. I’m really hoping we can reuse this soil next year. I’m not sure why we couldn’t, but this is a lot of dirt going into these bags that it’d be nice to be able to reuse. This grow bag is going to have white potatoes. We just put a little bit of soil in here. I’m going to cut these in half. I’d shoot for about three eyes per piece of potato. These are Yukon Gold. [Music] Cover those lightly. Once these start to grow, we will keep adding soil until it’s to the top of the grow bag. In this grow bag here, I’m going to be planting sugar snap tender sweet peas. I’m going to plant them kind of in the middle. And then I will put a tomato cage over top as a trellis. I think they probably will need it. [Music] For these containers here, I’m so excited. We are going to be planting some goosebererries. I read somewhere that Pixwell gooseberries do very well in containers. So, I bought two of these from Berlin Seed. I’ve never tasted a gooseberry. I don’t know what they taste like. I’ve heard good reports about them. So, we’re just going to try it. Pixwell goosebererries are supposed to do okay in partially shaded areas. They do need at least 6 hours of sunlight a day and I do think they will get at least that much back here. I hope so. On the porch they would not have, but I think they should back here. These gooseberry bushes will probably have to be moved into a bigger pot later on, but for the first year they should be fine in here. [Music] Not going to lie, I’m getting tired and I’m just ready to go inside. But there’s one more thing that has to be done. My strawberries need to be uncovered. If they’re under straw when it’s this warm, they can get yellow and slimy and die. I have been slowly working on this project by myself here and there. So, you can see that some of these are already uncovered and weeded, but probably half of them are done, the other half isn’t. I’m not going to worry about weeding them today, but I am going to just get the straw off and pull up the weed fabric so everything can dry out so that my strawberries can get sun. And then in the next couple days, Cody will be tilling in between these rows and we will put like a really heavy mulch down. I’m going to try to not put weed fabric down again. I’m going to try to just do a really heavy mulch in the rows. We are planning to put out a full video on how we do our strawberry patch. We get lots of questions about this, so be looking out for that. This strawberry patch got very, very weedy. It got away from me. I would really, really love to put my strawberry plants into raised beds, but it would take quite a few raised beds to actually make this work. I think I have like 125 to 200 strawberry plants. That would take quite a few raised beds for enough for our family. So, we’ll see once what I come up with. But weeding this patch is definitely one of my bigger garden jobs. So, I’m always trying to lessen my biggest stresses. [Music] So, is this like worm poop? It gets shipped straight to your I’m laughing. I’m planting k Robbie. Yes, I’m planting k Robbie. Oh, look at the little onions.