We Turned a JUNK PILE into a CONTAINER GARDEN!

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Living Traditions Homestead is all about living a simple and sustainable way of life. We believe the world has gotten too “busy” and that people are missing out on many of the true blessings this world has to offer. We started as a small urban homestead in Gilbert, AZ and after the city grew up around us, decided it was time leave corporate America and take a big leap of faith by moving our family to the Missouri Ozarks.

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Hey everybody welcome back to living tradition’s Homestead well we have quite a project for today we are going to be turning this junky area behind our Greenhouse into what is hopefully going to be a beautiful outdoor container garden food plot we have chosen to grow in container gardens actually almost

Everywhere in on the homestead these days for a number of reasons uh the first reason is we can control the soil that goes into the container gardens we have terrible soil here in southern Missouri very Rocky very clay just hard to grow in we can control the moisture

And we can control whether or not the bugs eat our spring plants alive we have struggled over the last probably 5 to seven years with growing Ras things like cauliflower broccoli cabbage all of the early spring plants because we have such a huge population here of cabbage Ms and

They lay the cabbage worms which get in all of our plants and just destroy them as soon as the weather starts to warm up a little bit now last year we did some experimenting trying to keep the bugs off of our spring plants our cauliflower broccoli cabbage that kind of thing and

It worked so well that this year we are expanding that idea which we’re going to be showing you today near the end of the video right we need to do a lot of other things first so basically today what we’re going to do is we’re going to get this area

Completely cleaned up we’re going to lay down some new weed fabric we’re going to get all the weeds out of here we’re going to fill up about 15 buckets and then we are going to get planting some plants now it’s still a while before we can plant things like our tomatoes and

Peppers and all of those summer plants we’ve talked to you guys about this in the past we really have too different growing Seasons here when it comes to Summer type plants or spring and summer type plants we have what we call our early spring season which is

For cool weather things like brasas and then we have our summer growing seasons for all of the things that you think of in a regular outdoor Garden but today we’re focusing on those early spring plants so let’s get to work so the first thing we’re going to do is I’m going to

Hop on the tractor we’re going to move a bunch of the stuff out of the way we got see all of this old wood here these are actually these were fence panels or gate panels that went in front of our hay barn because the old owner of this

Property he would allow the cattle to kind of go around the hay barn and he uses these to block off the front of the hay barn we’ve moved the fence line so they can no longer get to the front of the hay barn so we have no need to block

It off today we’re just going to move them out of the way at some point I’ll take them apart and use you know keep any Lumber that I can out of them but for today we’re going to move them to a different part of the homestead I’ve got

Over here an old silage tarp this has been laying back here for I think three or four years now this was just a big tarp that we bought to originally kill out the grass where we wanted our first Garden here on this Homestead so you guys this is all just stuff that

Overtime we didn’t know where to put and now we need to move it out of the way so I’m going to hop on the tractor and we’re going to get to work Stop can’t believe I live in your thought I think about you all the time morning evening and midnight such a wonderful deight for go give up everything that I own yeah I’d give it all up now just to be with you somehow Unexpected Love was found

You’re the rose in a we got all this broken glass and it shows ifest you’re the leaves in mid and I’ve come out here to say that I love you ooh ooh you ooh ooh so slow hold you in my arms w’t let go the world around could pass Us by

Thunderstorm lightning stri as we hold each other tight you’re the rose in a garden and it shows our morning you’re the leaves in made AR and I’ve come out here to say that I love you o ooh youoh o you o o you o o o o you ooh O You’re The Rose in a garden and it shows if I’m you’re the Le mid AR and I’ve come out here to say you’re the GR in a garden and it shows if I’m on it you’re the leaves in mid AR and I’ve come out here to say that I love

You well all of the junk is moved out of the way and kind of put into different spots or thrown away so what we’re left with now is our weed fabric a bunch of weeds and long grass so we need to do something about all of that but I wanted

To pause here for a second to show you guys and kind of dispel some myths we did a video I don’t know just several videos ago talking about this landscape fabric and what a game changer it has been for the homestead there were people in that video that pretty much argued

With us that things like Bermuda grass will grow right through this weed fabric and I want to show you that that in our experience is absolutely not true now you can see here on this weed fabric there is a ton of Bermuda grass but let me show you what’s happening

Um none of this Bermuda grass is growing through the weed fabric unless we have given it a spot to actually grow through so let me show you let’s start over here here is a bunch of Bermuda right here and this all of this here is growing

Through if we trace it back to where it actually is coming through the fabric right here there is a hole somehow a hole got cut in the fabric and that’s where all of this has grown through now the thing with Bermuda is it puts out Runners and tiny little

Roots if there are if there’s dirt or other things on top of the fabric and this is what we were trying to talk about in the last video this is a perfect example of it if there is dirt and other things on top of the fabric

Then those new roots that are on the runners of this Bermudagrass it will start to grow and root into the dirt that’s on top of the fabric the berbic grass will grow on top of the fabric but it will never grow from the bottom side of the fabric up

Unless you give it a spot like this to come through look at this is the main part all of that was coming through that one hole that is not a fault of the weed fabric that is a fault of us for allowing there to be a hole that we

Didn’t either cover up or do something about the plan is today we’re going to put down some new weed fabric that will partially cover this stuff and add a little extra length and then at some point in the future we’ll do exactly what we did out in the garden which is

Put landscape timbers around the edge of the of the weed fabric and that gives us a nice area to be able to weed eat up against and uh keep that Bermuda from kind of creeping up and over [Applause] [Applause] oh [Applause] Okay we have all of the junk cleared away from within this area we have the grass mowed down as much as it needs to be and as many of the weeds picked as need to be so the next step in the plan is to lay down new weed fabric this new

Piece of weed fabric is going to be 15 ft wide this way so it will overlap into the grass and then the entire length of the existing weed fabric Ready [Applause] Oh well I would say that this area is really starting to take shape it looks already a ton better than it did when we started earlier today so the next step now that we have the new weed fabric down everything’s nice and cleaned up the next step is going to be figuring

Out the layout that we want for these tubs that we have here now this area in particular is really a perfect place for us to have the this little growing area this area has full sun which is perfect for growing really any kind of vegetables and this area in particular

Is really kind of a hight traffic area for us one thing that we’ve learned over the course of now almost 15 years of homesteading is that we really want things to be in high traffic areas if we put things that are far away uh things that we don’t get near very often they

Tend to just be out of sight and out of mind so things especially things that need daily attention like plants uh we really want those in areas where we’re going to see them often we are going to be growing all of these plants in these buckets like this we’ve been using these

Kinds of buckets for a long time these are actually cattle protein tubs that you know the cattle have licked all the protein out during the winter or whatever and then they just Leave Behind These buckets and they’re really perfect for growing in what we like about these

Is that first of all we can get them pretty inexpensively either we save them from our own cattle or we buy them from other cattle farmers in our area uh we can usually get them for just a few dollars yeah three to5 is really each is

The going rate in our area and you can find them being advertised on Facebook Marketplace and on Craigslist or you could just ask people that you know that have cattle right and so these are they’re well some of them are a little bit taller they they range from about 16

To about 18 in tall which is plenty deep for almost all vegetables there are very few vegetables that are going to root deeper than about 16 or 18 in in fact you guys have seen the tomatoes that we grow in the greenhouse in these same tubs those tomato plants will grow

Taller than the top of the greenhouse and again their roots are only about 16 in into the ground now obviously they come without any holes in them and we do we do need drainage holes so we will go ahead and drill some drainage holes just a couple inches up from the bottom uh

With a drill and that will allow some water to stay at the bottom so it’s not completely dried out um but will allow excess water to drain out of it here’s one that we’ve used in the past and when we originally started using these we always drilled holes all the way in the

Bottom but what we’ started doing now is instead of putting holes in the bottom we put holes in the sides uh we put them up even a little higher than this so that a little bit of water can stay at the bottom of the bucket and that way uh

They don’t dry out nearly as quickly but again since we have this one we’ll use it no problem so we are going to be using these obviously but you know if you’re going to do an area like this any kind of raised bed would work any other

Kind of big containers or buckets uh that way we can control the soil control the moisture and like we said before we’re going to control the bugs as well right so we haven’t figured out exactly the layout that we’re going to use here yet there’s a few things to keep in mind

We obviously need to leave room so that the door of our Greenhouse can still open up now the other thing that we need to consider is that this is the exhaust fan for our Greenhouse this is a very powerful fan when the greenhouse starts to get too warm this fan will kick on

And it will suck all of the warm air out of the greenhouse and blow it out this way so this fan really really blows powerfully like if you stand here blow your hat off so we don’t really want to put any plants right here in front of this because they’re going to get

Damaged from all that wind so we’re going to grab our 16 tubs that we know we’re going to use and we’re going to play around here a little bit just figuring out the layout before we start filling them because right now they don’t weigh very much but once we fill

Them up with compost they’re heavy and they’re hard to move around so we’d rather figure that out beforehand that’s seven just for Just For example purposes I mean we have them like that is that too close to the fan yes I think so really nobody need to turn it on yeah

Okay yeah it’s that’s too strong yeah I didn’t think it would be so strong way over here yeah I’ve got an idea though let me turn this off we might want to do it this way though because that’s that’s a little close to that fan the whole row would need to be

This way but I think that’s probably fine I think that’ll look nice all right I think we have it all figured out it doesn’t seem like it should be that big of a decision but like I said once these are filled up with compost they’re heavy and I don’t

Really want to move them around uh I think this is going to work really well this this gives us two rows here so two rows of four and two rows of four that’s our 16 pots it also leaves us a walkway down the center here so that we can get

To you know the sides of every pot when we run the irrigation system it will run you know from the greenhouse it’ll run along here with a line that comes down in between the two rows of pots and then an irrigator inside of each pot so that

Will work out really well now that we’ve made up our minds we’re not going to change them we’re just going to go and we’re going to start filling these pots with compost to fill our pots we are going to be using some of the organic compost that we got delivered last fall

If you didn’t see that video we basically we had a huge truckload like half a semi load full of this organic compost brought To Us by a company that’s local to Missouri called Hansen’s Tree Service they produced this compost from tree clippings uh they actually collect food waste and scraps from one

Of the big amusement parks in Branson Missouri and they they have a facility where they make this organic compost this has been sitting since last fall so we are confident that it is already done composting it’s no longer hot so we are actually going to be filling our pots

Completely full with this compost now if you don’t have access to this amount of compost because it is a large quantity we recommend that you fill your pots or your containers with 50% compost and then the other 50% can be potting soil that’s actually a really great mix for

Container gardening right and that’s what we use most of the time if we don’t have a a big quantity of compost like this available so you can see we brought three buckets over in the tractor we’re basically going to fill three at a time and then take them back and put them

Into place um no big secret on how to fill them we’re just going to use a shovel and fill them up so as soon as we are done with that and we have all of the pots filled we’ll get back with you guys we’ll show you them full and then

We’ll get on to planting and show you our solution for keeping those pesky bugs off of your plants well as you can probably tell it’s the next day because we’re wearing different clothes so yesterday we ended up working on this project for about 5 hours we able to get

All of the buckets filled the weed fabric down and everything like that but then the day just got too late and we had to move on to other things so we’re back today we’re going to finish this project today now there are three things left that we need to complete within

This project we need to install our watering system our irrigation system we need to plant the plants that we want to grow in here and then we need to uh set up the way that we are going to protect all of these from insect pressure so the

First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to set up the irrigation system I’m going to show you guys quickly how we do that we’re going to use the same type of system that we use inside the greenhouse we’re just going to kind of extend it here outside now there’s only

A few basic parts to the irrigation system that we use this is just a I believe it’s half in Mainline tubing this will run from the far end of the greenhouse down to here and then to actually water in the pots we use these little sprinklers they will attach to

The the main line we’ll make a little hole so this can attach to the main line I’ll show you that when we get to that and these will go in the center of each bucket these spray out uh kind of a mushroom shape when we turn the water on

And they do a really good job on a bucket this size all right we’re going to get to work putting this all together it shouldn’t take us very long at all and then we can test it out and see how it actually Waters in the buckets so

We’re up at the front of the greenhouse this is where we already have a valve and you you can see I have it capped off here this is where this line used to run down for a row of buckets on the side of the greenhouse uh right here is where we

Connect our garden hose to start the irrigation system you can see our hose bib over there our Frost re hydrant and we just run a hose from there to here when we want to water this is a little inline filter that helps take get any sediment out before it gets to those

Little sprinkler heads now when we get ready to install the system in our big Garden where we installed all of those raised beds last fall I’m going to do a very indepth video about setting up a system like this from start to finish so uh watch for that video If you really

Want to learn how to do this more in depth but that’ll be probably another month or so before we get to that point I’m going to just undo this and we’re going to connect our new piece of Mainline and take this off don’t need that anymore we’ll connect our new piece

Of Mainline and then we’ll just unroll this all the way down to the back side of the greenhouse the next thing we need to do is install two of these te connectors because we need to run another piece of the same type of tubing from here in between the rows of the pots

All right so we’ve got our pieces of Mainline all completely hooked up it’s time to move on to actually installing the uh sprinkler heads the way that we’re going to do this is again there’s going to be one in the center of each of these

Buckets and these need to Ren run to the main line so this is a kind of a flexible E8 in tubing there’s a little Barb on the end of each one now we use a little tool that looks like this to poke a hole in that main line and then this

Barb will just kind of plug into that hole so let me show you that down here so we’ll take our tool here and we’ll make a hole in the top of the main line and then our Barb for our sprinkler head just pops in there like that and

That one’s all hooked up so we’ll just go around we’re going to do this for all 16 of these buckets and then we’ll be ready to test out the sprinkler system well now that the buckets are filled and the watering system is set up and working it is time to finally get

Started planting all these buckets we’re going to be planting cauliflower C cabbage napa cabbage and collards you may wonder you know where the broccoli is in that whole grouping uh we’ve decided not to grow broccoli this year it just gets hot so quickly here that

They don’t ever have a chance to put on a nice head before they bolt so for this year we’ve just given up and we’re just going to plant these things instead now we planted all of these uh seedlings that we have here we planted these from seed probably about 6 weeks ago we

Started them they are looking fabulous and they are definitely ready to get into some soil I am going to be planting two of these plants per bucket now that spacing is probably a little bit close together but we did it last year and it worked really well so planting in this

Soil is it’s a dream you guys because it’s so nice and fluffy I’m going to be starting off planting this Napa cabin Gage but really all of these are planted the exact same way so the first step with planting these is to just dig a hole and I’m going to be placing these

Kind of close to the edge just to maximize the amount of space between the two plants so that hole is just fine just tip this upside down and Pat it a little bit you can see how absolutely gorgeous and healthy these roots are and really that’s because we started them on

Time if you start them too early they’ll be all root bound and The Roots could be kind of yellowish and brown already if you start them with not enough time they’re going to be really tiny and succumb to maybe the wind or the sun I’m

Going to put these in here in that hole and then I’m just going to back fill with this soil I’m going to put a little bit above that soil block there and then I’m just going to uh press it down in there firmly and that’s really all there is to It well we’re on to the very last step everything is planted everything is well watered the very last step is protecting these plants from the bugs so we have tried a lot of different things throughout the years and the best solution that we’ve come up with for

These pots are what we’re going to show you today and you guys that are the that’s these right here these are actually the ones we bought last year these are fruit tree bags you can see them here they’re basically a big mesh bag that you can put they’re really

Designed for on like citrus trees or fruit trees but you guys they work perfectly on these pots as well these come in a variety of different sizes so you can buy them for whatever size pots or things that you need but look see look at that doesn’t protect me from

All the mosquitoes all summer long this is also what we’ll be doing uh when we go Blackberry picking no just kidding just kidding no but uh this is going to work out great you can see how windy it is today you guys we get big big winds here in the springtime especially and

Last year when we had these on our plants not a single one of them blew off the bottoms of them um have a a pull string a pull tie so it gathers itself around the bottom of the the pot here and you can tight you can tighten it and

That keeps it nicely wrapped around that pot now let us show you how we actually install these because you can’t just put these directly over the pot or it will damage the plants we actually use this wire that we make that we Bend and we

Make like an arch inside of the pot let me show you how to do that and then we’ll show you how to actually put one of these on all right so we’ll start right here here are our wires now these are wires that we purchased gosh

Probably 5 years ago or more from Grower Solutions and I don’t think they sell these anymore but you guys you can make these these are just chain link fence tension wire cut into about 6t lengths so all we’re going to do is we’re going to take two of these per

Pot we’re going to bend these over and we’re going to make basically a dome over the pot that way when we put our bag on it will protect these plants from the bag blowing in the wind and it will also give the plants some wind protection you can see how windy it is

Today once we have these bags on these plants will at least have a little bit of protection from the wind hardest part today is going to be actually putting the bag on so with the draw string you basically there’s just a little thing here you just pull this

That pulls it nice and snug at the bottom of the pot and that will stay on now all the way until Harvest Time there should be no reason to take these off unless something happens to the sprinkler inside and we need to get in there to fix it or something like that

But otherwise this can just stay on and like I said we haven’t had a single one of these blow off even in the really strong winds which is really nice well our project is complete you guys what a transformation for this spot back here just yesterday morning this was nothing

But really kind of a a garbage pile back here it was a spot where we just threw stuff when we didn’t know what else to do with it and now look at it it’s going to be another productive part of the homestead you guys we encourage you to

Take a look around your homestead or your backyard your sidey yard somewhere where you know you just throw stuff out outside you can turn it into an amazing container vegetable garden just like this so we’d love to hear whether or not it’s time for you guys to start planting

Wherever you are we know some of you are in much warmer climates than us some of you it’s probably still way too cold but we would love to know are you excited for this upcoming gardening season we think this is going to be probably the best gardening season we’ve had yet you

Guys we’re so excited that you stopped by today to watch us turn this junk pile area into a productive container vegetable garden if you’re enjoying videos like this make sure that you hit the Subscribe button and also make sure that you share this video on your social

Media with people you know who would enjoy it as well until next time thank you so much for stopping by our Homestead take care and God bless God bless