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to have a good harvest one must plant good seeds and must also use the right kind of fertilizer the carrots have grown large and firm how good they will taste well good morning everybody it’s Thursday and we did are just in time to get you going for their weekend of gardening it is that time of year and we’re going to talk about containers today it’s you know containers are a beautiful thing for me they can be a terrible thing but one thing we know is we need to avoid certain mistakes with containers and so we’re going to run through those and this will kind of get you going in the right direction you know hopefully if you’re just getting started or whatever it’ll kind of push you into the right way or maybe you’re a year or two into containers and U some of the the problems can creep up in time but um I I know bavia is here I have my lovely co-host Miss bavia is here and um she’s a big big I mean huge container Gardener she’s probably got maybe 500 containers in her yard how do you manage all that yeah that’s I’ve downsized a bit yeah I’m just at 500 this year joking everybody that’s that’s a throwback to the original episodes yeah yeah yeah um did I tell you how much I love the show monk I hate that show oh I love it and I um I have a tendency like white noise for me sometimes is a television show that it’s like very predictable yeah and or a television show that I’ve seen before so I recently finished kind of coming out of the winter a rewatch of Monk and so when you open up about containers all I I think of a it’s a gift and a curse you know which is one of his common lines and you know that can be the case in the gardening world for containers um and I’m trying to work my way out out of the version of bavia that’s so concerned about you as a gardener that I give you a dozen butts you know but keep remember this and remember that you know um I do think containers are a great entryway into gardening for people and I do also think that there are opportunities for a disappointment and that’s a part of what we’re going to discuss today you know how do you avoid these mistakes um so there is absolutely a primary use of garden beds in my garden but there’s definitely supplemental growing happening in containers yeah um and I think that that’s a way it doesn’t have to be exclusively one way or another I think you figure out what works for you what you like to grow in one medium versus another yeah and I mean you know we get originally we got a question on our Facebook uh group uh backyard gardens community garden that there somebody wanted to know about amending containers and then that kind of set set us off on this path where we we’ll probably end up diving a little bit more in depth in certain things about containers but um you know so that was a question of the day I don’t know how many episodes ago it was it’s a good treasure hunt for everybody but um so that being said we have a new email address for questions of the day it’s called byg gmail.com so you can email us if you want and it’ll be easier for us to keep track of them because a lot sometimes what happens is they get lost so do that and also there’s a link below for seeds and also to become a subscriber so all that stuff if you want to help support the show get yourself some seeds do all that stuff and don’t forget you can use the code 1 million spilled any way you want with numbers whatever uh no spaces and it gets you 10% off and a free packet of seeds with every order all direct soble for this this season so that being said what were the um we were previously talking and you said something about there’s a few things that kind of set you up in your containers what were they I think the big considerations are the type of soil you use one two I think it’s how you fertilize what you plant in those containers three I think it’s your watering regimen right and then I want to add one and that would be the space for it and so we talked about this and I could have just pretended like I had four but I want to give you your credit and I want to acknowledge like I can’t believe I forgot that bit but that’s hugely important you know um and so my joke earlier was like you can’t get apple pies out of a you know five gallon apple tree planted apple tree and Ben does a bavia and he’s like but you may be able to get one apple yeah apple turnover maybe uh but no like there containers that for growing Purp purp have different sizes for a reason um I probably see people more often planting something that could use more space in a small container versus the reverse yeah you know well you almost never see a single radish in a 30 gallon container you know no well and so since we’re talking about it let’s start with spacing and then work our way down um because that’s basically square one you know you you’ve decided to get a pot and you’re going to put a plant in it um and now you can get anything to grow in any size pot there’s plenty of proof out there for it it’s just how productive is it going to be I really like the word productive I’m I’m I’m feeling that word productive so you know um in my garden I have six 20 plus gallon containers I’m not sure exactly how many it is I’m sure it’s more than 20 but that’s what I run in my garden and in a serious note what container like what is the number of containers if it has to be rough fine and then sizes roughly yeah I did a few years ago about 60 containers of various sizes smallest being about three gallons largest being about 20 that became almost overwhelming so I scaled back so current count is probably closer to about 30 containers and sizing is more like at the smallest about 4 gall and again the top range is 20 gallons and to be quite Frank it’s difficult for me to move around anything larger than 20 gallons like once you get that soil in if you get that soil and it’s wet I just physically have troubles with you know moving those things around even if I have my little cart 20 gallons is a little bit of a stretch for me now I don’t move every container around every year to know but yeah so your comment about um you moving a 20-gallon pot made me paranoid so either I’m super super weak and you’re really really strong or I am underestimating the size of my pots so I’m G I’m gonna pull it up and look cuz I’m like if she’s not moving my containers there’s no way my grow bags which I know are 20 gallons and so I’m filling them up not quite to the brim but for those like I before I plant them I’m like I think I have a short yeah I do I have a short on YouTube and a a real on Instagram where I am moving a planted 20 gallon container it’s a grill bag and they have the little handles and I was cute too honey let me tell you that so I was coming in from an event or something I was out with some friends or something so I’m like moving it only because it started to ripen the fruit and I didn’t want the squirrels to get to it and it was a right you know I was kind of like I know you don’t watch a lot of TV but it’s that old episode of Friends where you know Ross and Chandler are moving the sofa and Ross is yelling pivot PIV like that you could put that soundtrack you know to me trying to move it um so so yeah yeah I’m not find oh here here’s the post I saw let me see I mean I’m not putting that thing over my head or anything but oh well I mean I went to go move mine and I had to borrow a dolly and have two people help me get it on there so clearly I’m doing something wrong yeah a number 25 pot is what I use okay I don’t know what that is in gallons I’m scrolling and I’m not seeing it but it’s the biggest pot you can get um I found a bunch of them on the side of the road mhm but it definitely does not tell me anyways they’re big um and they’re extremely heavy so you know once I put them in that’s basically the end of the story so um that’s what I use but as far as space go goes wow we got off the subject easy there um cuz he’s fighting the urge like you’re not going to challenge me to a lifting contest of pots get it out of your mind yeah I’m gonna go out there and just be like all right let’s do this bavia you grab yours I’ll grab mine but you know like last year I think I had maybe 10 pots or so and I had put some peppers in maybe one or two gallon pots and um man they just they struggled now um there’s a couple reasons why um one of them was simply because there’s just not enough room for the roots so the roots need to spread I’m starting to this is something that I’m learning about now more so is the amount of root space needed for plants like foilage fine whatever you can visually see it but then you start getting into root space and I’m starting to see that that’s not really working out the way I wanted and um that was just one of the lessons that I learned last year and the other one was just keeping it watered it was really difficult yeah so I had a neighbor come over to me the other day and um he’s starting a garden he’s got uh he went and bought I don’t know what it I haven’t even looked at it yet but it’s like a 10 foot by two foot bed of some sort and he’s wants to buy some Tomatoes but he’s going to put them in pots outside of the beds and which is fine that’s very good I mean I usually grow tomatoes in my pots and I asked him what size they were and he showed me and they were probably maybe two to three gallon pots at that and I was like man really and truly you need to think about it because you know my whole thing is is I don’t care what you do in your garden it’s your garden it’s your space you do it the way you want but when it comes down to it like you’re not going to get the results that you want out of it because that plant just won’t have enough room to grow yeah I um so cover off on spacing and teetering into watering um a good if you’ve gardened and raised beds or in ground a good indicator and let’s say you have a successful plant something that you feel like produce what it should be producing whenever you pull that plant up make note a mental note of how big those roots are um so sometimes I’m surprised by how how little space it seems it seems that tomato plants take um I think things like sunflowers and and okra have huge root systems anytime I’ve ever pulled them up out of a bed um the largest things I’ve ever tried to grow in containers are okra and tomato plants and I think a bit of that is the gardener I’ve just not had wonderful success with either right you know generally the plant for tomatoes look really really good but I’ve never had tomato plants in containers produce more Tomatoes than any of my raised bed tomato plants yeah right you know and so I think a part of what we’re talking about today influences that and is a a big fluence on why I haven’t had that production right you know so I think there’s something to be said about that um just as a hey surprise favorite thing Peppers kick butt in my garden in containers yep smallest container I plant peppers in is four gallons yep the largest I’ve planted peppers in is 10 I think anywhere in between is just fine I almost always put a single pepper plant in a container I we really have the urge to double up triple up quadruple up in some things some things they work like I put a bunch of you know Contender beans you know in a container but a four gallon container single plant single pepper plant of any variety yeah and I mean you know it’s all it’s better to have too much space and too little to it you know it’s if you talk about potted plants typically that’s not the case but in the summertime growing these things it does help because the demand’s not on the container for the moisture um you know as you fill it as the brutes fill out it’s just like if you’re starting seeds and you’re noticing like every day I got a water it’s wilting every day well what you’re seeing is it’s using up all there’s not enough space and it’s using all of the moisture in there so it’s just keep keep that in mind as you you move forward and the last thing I want to say about um space or the size of the pot is not all plants need big giant pots you know um like you you brought up radishes for instance um now I grew radishes in one of my big pots I put like 20 radishes in there and I got huge radishes out of it man look I know that it was ridiculous to put radishes in those pots I’m completely aware of that but it worked out for me it was fine it wasn’t a big deal but there was just a lot of unused space within that pot M so you know don’t think that everything needs to go in a giant pot um I think if you’re dedicated for watering I think five gallons is a good is the minimum which clearly you’ve said four so um but you know five gallon bucket I try not to use buckets try to graduate from buckets that’s it just looks better okay I I hate The Five gallon bucket look but um just keep going around that and you know once you get five gallons you can graduate a little bit and you’ll find your sweet spot the good thing is is you can get a lot of these pots almost free you know um like I said I got all my pots off the side of the road somebody had planted a bunch of stuff I drove by and I mean my truck was going sideways I was jamming on the brake so hard my my son I was like get out get those pots he’s like yeah Daddy we got gold throwing them in the back so so you could scan um B better guard Garden on Instagram or Facebook CU this is where I I counter your your comments um and I have buckets that I it’s kind of like mulch my my wood chip mulch it’s free and it’s really hard for me to turn it down so I get those buckets from the grocery stores and um and they are not aesthetically pleasing and I put them along my fence line right so they’re kind of tucked away now and the reason why I mentioned four is sometimes the bakery gives me the 4 gallon bucket that had icing in it versus a five right I’m like yeah okay it’s fine um and so had they not been free I wouldn’t buy buckets I personally wouldn’t yeah I think also one of the benefits is is just plainly put my weather so I speak about this here and there we don’t get consistent 100° temperatures right you know so that’s hard on containers period And even 5 gon containers you know not those things not drying out um I look at the containers really of any size and you say all right where is it you know um what’s the size and what do you have planted across the season so a lot of us are gardening and planting things for more than one season as well so consider that too yeah and I mean as far as like moisture levels go inside of the pot it’s it’s one of those things too like I think the reason why and I’m I’m just going to say it out loud that Tomatoes don’t produce as much is I think we just it’s almost impossible to water enough In The Heat Of Summer um but you also need to make sure like okay so this is where it gets kind of weird for me is like you want to water a lot but you also don’t want it water logged so how do you manage that and I mean the first thing is make sure you’ve got a drainage hole so if you go to get Buckets make sure you’re drilling a hole in the bucket or a number of holes in the bucket just to you know you get a couple days of rain that thing will be swimming and I mean I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to tip over a pot that didn’t have anything it’s hard to get the water out of there so and I mean as far as my garden goes I’ve run a drip system in my garden and I’m watering it looks like every 3 days I water my main Garden for you know hour and a half every 3 days I have to water the pots every day to every other day it’s just constant water water water so I do that as well yeah I think um I are are you on water for number three on our list no no it’s number two we did space then water oh oh okay so I gave the list and the order and then you decided to re I think I changed things I didn’t mean to so number two water um so the amount of water initially like when you first plant out and then as the seasons change that’s what I point back to some of the plants that I’ve had that struggle I believe firmly I mean I I know what a dry plant feels like I have house plants I know what that’s like you know um I test my containers the same way I test as far as do they need watering my regular raised beds put my finger in there about knuckle deep to see what the moisture is like um I also mulch my containers as a note um so I’ve been using more recently in the last couple of years shredded leaves so I absolutely add that to the tops of all of my containers um and it’s not just watering like it’s it you you have to give yourself some time to figure out what makes sense right like you know how often in the frequency um some of y’all know I hand water steel all of my garden the occasional sprinkle occasional sprinkler will run um but I hand waterer those containers as well and it’s easy to kind of water and keep on moving some people use the rule of thumb is wait till the water runs out you know and then you know you’ve thoroughly watered it which is actually going to connect to the new number three who’s keeping track but but yeah it’s probably going to be the number one killer uh to plants and containers is not watering enough yeah well and I mean it’s it’s tough too because in the beginning of the Season you stick a small plant in you don’t have to water it much but then as it grows again it fills up you need to water more so you know everything that we’re going to talk about is going to be linked together here yeah so there’s it’s I mean more so than a regular guard and that’s the thing about a container is it’s it’s very tightnit each thing affects it’s you know each other so as we go through and we talk about watering one of the main benefits I think about a container is you have the ability to amend a container on a at a micro level so you know as we get into the soil aspect of it and stuff like that I can add an amendment to the soil for the garden for the container to be more retentive of the soil you know of the water sorry not the soil very important that we understand that we’re talking about retaining water not soil so you know I could put some Pete Moss in um you could get a water retentive soil to put in there in itself you know um and you can do each one different I mean you can almost treat each container like its own separate Garden mhm yeah for sure for sure um and generally speaking my soil makeup is the same for me um but there’s some things where I may um amend a little bit different um so I I I look at the watering piece and I feel like if you’re in year one of your container gardening it’ll take you a few years to if you’re growing like the same thing in the same containers year over year it’ll take you a few years to really feel like you got your groove with it um especially if you’re in one of the hotter places you know um so again if you’re reaching the top temperatures it’s going to take you some time I think one of the things I’ve observed about myself in containers is outside of peppers I probably am changing up what I’m growing in containers each year and that kind of takes away from the mastering of it you know yeah I could see that I I kind of stick with the same things within a container I mean you know this was the first year I put radishes in there figured why not but other than that I kind of stick with the same because I I just have things that I like that produce in the out of a container um you know when it comes to the soil and amending and watering and all that stuff this is where those go hand in hand together because as you water you’re going to lose soil so it’s like you fill it up to the tippy top you grow in it and the next thing you know you’ve lost you know a quarter of the soil by the end of the year where did it go I think it’s compressed primarily well it’s ComEd there’s some soil that’s coming out of your drainage holes yeah there’s some coming out and then it’s also decomposing M so you know just like bavia said which I love that you use mulch in your containers because I don’t see a lot of people put mulch in containers that’s something that I practice as well um and you know I’ll fill up the container with Mulch and then by the end of the year there is no mulch in it and it’s time to you know but all that stuff will break down so the compressing and all that stuff and so we’ve got to add soil to it now this is where it gets a little bit hairy what is you know what is your method to amend soil well hold on yeah let’s do a mending first we’re going to go backwards so for mending your containers what do you like to do uh so I like to do something similar to what I do in my raised beds I’m going to let’s just take plainly put I got a 20 gallon bag grow bag I have a little black I think it’s used for concrete stuff it’s a little black container that’s kind of flat and low I dump the 20 gallons of soil into that container so that’s the soil I grew in last year I am going to add potentially some new soil actual soil right you know so it’s whatever the it’s in the container is that container mix right I’ll add potentially some Top Soil right you know um I may add garden soil which again these are no nose for containers generally speaking but I’m only adding a bit of it um I am going to add some compost again this is all adding to this 20 gallon bag worth of soil container mix um I may may may add some parite um and depending on my feel I may add some granular fertilizer all to this little black trough right and then mix it up and I H per pot this is right now it’s 20 gallons plus worth of container mix now cuz I’ve added these other things but you’re doing it for each container you’re doing that well let me let me get to the other bit of it so I’m loading in the so I said may may may I’ll tell you the why for the May so then I reload shovel in all of that mixture into my 20 gallons I’m going to have some left over remember because I added more you know soil I added more compost um and other days I do everything I just described but I don’t add the granular fertilizer because I want to add it when I’m planting because I’m adding it based on what I’m planting right right you know so it all there’s no Rhyme or Reason as to the I do it this way all the time under these circumstances it just depends on what I’m doing you know maybe I only have two containers to manage and I’m going to plant them all out today you know cuz what ends up happening is I’ll go through that first version where I’m doing all of the steps and then it’ll be 3 weeks later and I’ll forget wait did I add fertilizer you do this or not yeah yeah so that’s fun that’s my way we are totally different in this so that’s what people tell us yeah they do I um I you know again I have bigger pots so that helps but I take my shovel I dig a hole out of the middle I dump soil in I put a couple shovel fulls of compost in and then I put about a quar handful of fertilizer in mix it together walk away that’s really all I do um you know and I only do it about once a year so I do it in the beginning of the year and then I call it good um no I take that back in the fall I’ll redo it again um just a little bit you know I might throw another shovel a compost in or something like that but nothing insane is occurring so um I just try to do it easy now the reason why I asked you if you’re doing it in your trough one pot at a time is because um you know somebody with multiple pots especially if you have smaller pots that you can pick up dumping them all into a big pile making a whole big just mixing it all up adding whatever you want into it and then putting it all back what do you think about that I like that I love that yeah um have you ever seen the meme where the most recent version is a lady with a glass of wine and she’s sitting in the middle of the floor and there’s they’re clothes they trinkets they’re just all over the place and it’s like you get in the middle of your reorganization project and you realize you have no more steam I’m paraphrasing obviously I am notorious for that yeah right I have a good girlfriend we used to be roommates she sends me that Meme every time she sees it and I’m like yep still me right you know so I say that to say um I’m conscious of the space I have I’ve done that before and I think it works really well um I’m also conscious of who I am and so you will start bavia this on Monday and that pile of dirt will still be there on Thursday yeah right you know so is it the end of the world no does it create a mess what happens when it rains on Wednesday um so if you’re getting in and out I think that makes absolute sense that’s kind of what I try to do with a trough I also use like those big um big uh storage containers right you know so I want to be able to work up shovel around that soil and it’s a little bit larger I don’t know how many gallon like 40 gallons or something those containers are sometimes um so yeah I think that way works I like the idea of working in place like you do great not necessarily for me it’s again just kind of the way I’m wired right I want to really feel like this is a a fresh kind of you know bit of soil and I’m not saying what you’re doing doesn’t create a fresh bit of soil but you know I’m am I getting down to the bottom and really bringing that soil up to the top maybe maybe not is it absolutely necessary no but I like it yeah so I mean I think we covered three different ways there right yeah I mean there’s I mean there’s a whole bunch of different ways um a lot of people just real quick I’m sorry a lot of people will use a tarp or something for what you were just describing yeah you lay tarp down dump everything on mix it up whatever I like that it’s just I’m I’m not going to do it because my pots are too heavy to easily pick up I I get tired of shoving yeah for me cuz clearly I’m weak and you’re way strong I tell you that I pulled my back on something it wasn’t 20 gallon pots though no were you spinning lettuce again shout out to anybody who knows heard that episode um no but you know it it’s the important thing to take away is you got to amend your pots you’ve got to add soil into it and this is a big downfall for me for containers I mean look I add soil to my garden every year but I literally just shovel it on and just walk away and everything else kind of takes falls into place with pots it’s a little bit more complicated because you know especially if you’re using fertilizer which is important um you know you can get excess salts built up inside of your pots um that’s a big especially like I know in the Cannabis industry it’s a real issue because they have to you know when you’re growing cannabis in a pot you are cons consistently fertilizing trying to maximize that growth uh so when you do that you build up the salts in it and so you’ve got to either flush them out or replace the soil one of the two and um this you know so adding the soil to it will NE I don’t want to say neutralize it but it it dilutes it right it dilutes that effect and then a lot of times if you’re getting bagged soil it’s probably got fertilizer in it so you’re already feeding it but it’s probably just not going to be enough for what you’re doing yeah so let’s take a a pause right there um and in my early years of container gardening I use exclusively bag soil right um and you know honestly someone I Happ to answer a question about this um uh today someone asked kind of what do you recommend for soil and I’m not um I’ve used a few different brands of bagged soil the reason why I don’t exclusively use bag soil now is simply because of the expense right you know um it’s not necessarily an issue with quality but there are some bagged soils for potting soil that are better than others and it changes from year to year sometimes so anywh who if you’re using baged soil let’s just walk that through you’ll have the advertisement on the package that says feeds up to six months some I’ve seen more recently feeds up to nine months right you know so if you take that for what it’s worth and you do nothing but put that soil into a container you start in April and you’re done by Fall theoretically when you get to year two everything that that plant was fed is gone like it’s been depleted from that soil right and that’s again it’s I pick up on on my tone here like I’m saying all right okay sure that it doesn’t need anything else nine months I got to I can grow in here I don’t necessarily believe that and I try to make adjustments for that but let’s just pretend so when you get to year two that’s why we’re talking about amending right you know that stuff that you’re growing isn’t going to grow in that soil year year overy year if you started with potting soil and never do anything even if you make your own mix it’s not going to feed Infinity for Infinity can I make a comment real quick yeah of course how ridiculous is it that we in this day and age feel like we need to ask what kind of soil are you buying like what are we saying it’s dirt we’re using like it’s crazy that there’s a whole market for bag dirt and that we are so confused over it and I’m not saying like shame on you for asking that’s not what I’m saying I’m saying like the the principle of it is just crazy um I will say because soil bag dirt is not created equal yeah and when I and when I say created equal I don’t mean top soil versus soil versus garden soil that’s not what I’m talking about I’m talking about brand wise I mean I’ve gotten soil that had trash in it like legit like Hershey it was specifically Hershey Kiss rappers bald up in it um so you know there but again I paid 50 cents for the bag I mean what are you going to do you know what I mean um I will say this if you don’t know what kind of soil to get my personal suggestion is look at the dirt if it looks good use it I mean all the words and stuff on there it’s like what’s the composition of it when you hold it in your hand if you hold it in your hand does it look like something that you would want to grow in then use it because the benefit of the container is it’s such a small space that you can add to it if you like if you like start dumping out you’re like oh wait hold on you could start over versus doing a raised bed and I dump a truckload in and I’m like oh I don’t like that well what the hell am I going to do now I got to shovel it all out like that would be a nightmare so you know use that to your advantage and I think it’s important too CU you can tell what what brand soil you use I might not even be able to find that here you know what I mean so maybe a mute point yeah you know so um yeah I mean I feel like I don’t there’s a part of me that wants to dive in there and there’s a part of me that doesn’t f don’t the part that doesn’t want to dive in is I don’t want to get on a soapbox about paying for dirt and paying for water save that for the behind the scenes and the you know backyard gardens after dark podcast very strong feelings about both not to mention paying for and sometimes a lack of quality in either um so putting that aside um I do believe that the plethora of brands for a number of things that we experience does create the one is better than the other tell me what you’re doing right I I get that question um I try not to feel like I’m pressured around the response to that um I have you said the Hershey’s Kisses wrapper one of the brands that I really like for uh garden soil like if I’m topping off a raised bed one year I opened it up and I was like what is this you know and so I I loaded that thing back up and took it back to the store like nope not in my garden um so anyway um I think that um a good example of potting soil which I’m going to use the term potting soil or part potting mix I’m going to use those terms where if you’re going to a store and buying it that’s generally recommended for containers I have two different brands that I’ve been using over the years and one that is noticeably fluffier right you know has less organic matter in it compared to another right you know and again it’s the application if I’m planting outside I may in a 20 gallon container want a little bit more you know maybe a few more wood chips in there maybe not a whole lot but a few more and then if I’m planting in a smaller container maybe I just want all of the fluff maybe I want some vermiculite maybe I want some paralite in here that’s what it says in this package so I think it’s it’s trial and error to be quite Frank um yeah and I mean you learn over time I mean the thing is is once you build you put it in there like cool I like it then you can add to it and you you remember it but um you know it’s it’s tough because and it one of the reasons why you get people get the question is because it’s like well I like your containers what soil are you using yeah well typically speaking the brand of soil that you got doesn’t matter um it’s how you you know that’s one piece of the puzzle the fact is you just got to have soil I mean we’re not growing airplants so there is that aspect it’s easier for me to say what I don’t use so straight top soil I use that meaning nothing else do you put only top soil in a in a container I top them off with top soil okay it’s different was it originally only top soil no I’m I’m taking it back no they are all no well I’m thinking because now that I have the bigger pots I had to when I got my last year when I got my garden dirt it was all top soil because I rotate every other year and they they’re filled up with pure top soil your container is filled up with top pure top soil mhm I am sh by that and now it makes me question if it’s my experience or what I’ve consistently heard I have opened a bunch of bags of top soil top soil is much more dense than you know your potting soil by Design and that’s why generally it’s not recommended right because there’s not as much Iration in that dense soil it doesn’t allow um to kind of dry it it’s creates an opportunity to be more water logged but you have been here and has lived experience so there’s that so for me I would never add pure top soil only to a container I use it as a part of kind of a three-part mix some type of soil some type of like filler in the case of Pete Moss is what I have access to Coco Coy is said to be a more sustainable um how do you say it cocoa cor cor I’m just going to agree with you I don’t say it out in public cuz I don’t know how to say it yeah what well who are you basically put me on the spot for cuz I wanted to hear it cuz I want to know how to say it but I don’t know if you said it right and I’m not going to you’re not going to bring me down to spelling it all you’re picking up on what I’m throwing down audience and then compost that mixture and there’s a video on um YouTube because this is just a big old infomercial um where I do making easy and cheap potting soil mix it looks like the way I titled it um and it breaks down me making brand new a brand new mixture from scratch and then it breaks down me amending it from one year to another um and so that’s worked for me now also take it with a grain of salt I’m going to keep it really real I just told you earlier on ochre and tomatoes just give me the flux every year in containers every year I try them so there’s that but everything else I put in containers like I’m killing the game son I haven’t thought about putting an okra in the container I might need to try that yeah let me know how it turns out well no I don’t want to because it’s they turn into a damn tree and then it messed me up yeah and I mean you know just because I put top soil now again the top soil that I got I bought it from somebody who made the top soil and there was like extra little sticks and stuff in it so there was that aspect but it didn’t have any compost or anything like that um now I’ll come back this year I mulched it as well so that helps add organic matter and then this year I’ll come back and I may put a you know again I’ll put the the compost in stuff like that but for that’s what I use and that was just because that’s what was available to me I’m not hardcore container Gardener like you are though like I mean and I’m not saying you’re hardcore but the numbers don’t lie you know what I mean I got six containers you got 20 30 whatever it was so there is that but when we go into it because the compost is a good addition because we have to get into the feeding aspect of it and you got to feed containers and again if you’re buying bag soil depending on how much you put in there is some food in it but I’m going to argue that you should put more in me too well I think you’re it’s preemptive uh so in my early years of gardening period there was no fertilizing and it’s been my more recent years of gardening there have been fertilizing there’s been fertilizing across my garden but where I’m most consistent is with my containers um and it’s because I’m watching plants grow throughout the season I see when they’re flourishing and I see when they start to Peter out and it’s not necessarily the plant I’m growing doesn’t like this time of season no that thing’s hungry yeah you know so I start the season with feeding them and then I at some point for maybe not every single container but for the majority of them I’m coming into in place fertilize um you know sometimes depending on what it is it’s you know something water soluble you know um sometimes it’s something granular it kind of depends on the mood depends on what I have in my garage and access to um so I definitely have Rec it took me some time to I don’t want to say admit this to myself as if it’s like some big thing like oh my gosh I’ve been fighting it but I’m a fighter but it’s it’s you kind of have to see it for me myself to realize oh this thing is lacking and now I can see what happens when I give it what It ultimately needs so how are you losing you know what this container soil bag said you had you had nine months how are you losing time on that you know between the rain and you’re watering some of that stuff is quite literally rinsing out yeah I mean nitrogen’s water soluble end of story you can take a whole container with 100% nitrogen in it somehow if you could get that and then you could water it consistently and it will literally wash out of your garden so we got to think about that when we do this um you you you said a good analogy earlier spoiler or not a spoiler but behind the scenes we actually started this episode and stopped it but in the previous version of it you said this analogy about seeing container gardens on the internet oh okay yeah I you say that again cuz it’s really important and it applies directly to this yeah God bless you because my current memory always gets confused we rarely kind of stop and start but in the case when we do I’m like did we talk about that in the last episode you know was it the one that we’re doing now uh so I feel like my view and I I feel like I take in quite a bit of garden content and my view of container gardeners and Gardens is you either see this flourishing container garden there’s some people that have containers side by side by side and you look at they’re just like again everywhere and plants are like just spilling out of it plant height plant leaves width and then this is the key and the actual production if it’s a fru and crop like I need to see that right so you see that it’s like oh my gosh and then on the other side of it you see people with puny containers look at the soil that’s dry the plants are skinny you know they the leaves are yellowing and the comment I made earlier and I’ll say it again as I’m saying it out loud I think you know it could be offensive but this is just what I believe in my head you know and a lot of times it feels like they don’t realize the gardener doesn’t realize that this could be better for them and I say that based on the way they speak about whatever they’re sharing or the way they write about it in a caption you know you know and this is the hard bit I can’t jump in every time and say hey how about you do this because people if they don’t realize they have a problem sometimes they don’t want a potential solution right you know um so so yeah I feel like there’s you know most times it’s one extreme or another there’s not a lot of in between yeah and I think you know I said this before but it’s worth noting is I think too that people when you’re growing you don’t realize it cuz you see it every day and then when you come and you like see it like fresh like you you can immediately pick it out and I mean in that description you gave you can hear every single thing that we’ve talked about so far yellow leaves nitrogen deficiency dried soil puny could be watering could be a mending of the soil and then obviously the watering aspect of it or the space the plant just may not have enough space to grow in it dress because of that it could be pest pressure which we didn’t touch on but yeah it could be a number different things yeah it could be pest pressure kind of goes across the board almost it’s not specific to Containers yeah it’s not really specific to Containers uh that’s just general gardening so I mean and it’s nothing against anybody it’s like look you don’t realize it you know you don’t realize what you could have but just take some of these steps and eliminate some of the problems you know what’s the easiest for you to eliminate in this you know um as far as the fertilizer goes I don’t want to gloss over it too much I recommend topping off your soil clearly even if it does have fertilizer I recommend putting in more fertilizer at planting and then I also recommend coming back if it’s a long season crop and pl and fertilizing again at least once or twice more to kind of keep that plant going because it will you have to remember those roots have nowhere to to search for food cuz that’s what a root does a root will come down and it’ll look for two things water and food and so the the gist of it is if you give it too much water then you won’t have a plant that will dig its roots down deep and it won’t be held into the ground strong if you give it too little water it’ll go too deep but then it can desiccate the plant and die same thing for food those plants are going to search for food and that’s why for the rest of my garden and this I don’t just put fertilizer in the hole anymore I put it around the whole area so that the plant will send the roots out looking for the roots and then it gets broad more Roots means more fruits baby that’s what I got to say that’s the that’s the saying for the year more Roots equals more fruits yeah um I haven’t heard she say of you know the idea of um shallow watering and the shallow roots you know shallow watering creating you know maybe puny roots in a while and it’s a really good reminder um you know if you got something that’s planted underground it’s hard for you to know how well it’s doing underground right I mean nobody’s seeing their Roots When a plant’s actively growing um and so I look at kind of this and I say a good exercise is we’re at the beginning of like almost a new season for the garden so spring is wrapping up for some of us and heading into summer shortly you know if you’re pulling full plants out of containers take a look at that root system again log that information um one of the things I’ve toyed around with uh last year and I know that I talk about collars a lot and I’m G to keep on talking about them I did a a new variety that was meant to grow bit more compact I can’t think of the name of it out the top of my head right now um and they did wonderful they were in either seven or 10 gallon grow bags wonderful in the spring about summer they were on The Struggle Bus and I had very close to them collards in a raised bed that were still flourishing you know and so I said I know what classic bavia does classic bavia really nurtured those plants because everything else in the garden was pretty small or compact you know at that point um you know in those first couple of months and then kind of all things things happen in the garden and I started paying less attention to those plants and they suffer suffer greatly um and so I looked and I said if I had to do it over again and I may have mentioned this at the beginning of last season I just don’t remember you know sometimes things run their course so getting Harvest off of those plants in the spring may have been enough for me right you know so I know I push the envelope when it comes to Growing some brasas and leafy greens well into the heat of our season but I couldn’t keep up with it right right I couldn’t manage the pest pressure for it um I because I was trying to keep them covered I couldn’t manage the watering I probably didn’t do a good job with the fertilizing and there’s something to be argued I still haven’t pulled the roots out for these plants but let me put an alarm for my phone calendar reminder I’m curious what the how big the roots are when I pull those plants out this year they’re still in the garden in the grow bags from last last year you know I’m wondering how little soil is left they probably topped out from that perspective as well right you know um so I say all of that to say some things you plant don’t need to stay in that container the like all of its possible kind of start to finish time frame yeah it’s okay to pull a thing refresh amend that soil and plant something new right yeah so and I mean one thing you know the honorable mention would be uh having a good plan for your garden your container garden as far as like positioning and stuff like that the benefit is you can move containers around which is why we always recommend using the planter app they actually have in their drag and drop square foot interface they have a um container outline that you can put in so you can visually see that this will be a container um so if you’ve been on to my YouTube channel and you saw me do my gardening plan which I’m going to do another one uh soon probably for fall coming up uh you’ll see that I have up against my Greenhouse all the containers lined up and it just it’s easy to to recognize that so definitely check that app out there is a link below that uh will give you a discount on the planter app on all subscriptions to it all memberships uh it’s a very useful app combative companion planting visual very visual they’re always adding new varieties and vegetables and a lot of flowers now if that’s something you’re into so uh check that out it’s the p l n t app and it’s available on Google and apple and you can use it on your phone tablet or PC and um that’s reason why we love them as a sponsor because it is a very good app that we live by on the show so that being said that brings us to the time of the show where we need to do the question of the day and I have an interesting one this we’re just going to run with it so this one comes from the uh backyard gardens community garden and Christina wants to know what do we think about those fancy countertop composters that magically turned everything from celery butts to chicken bones into perfect soily compost I don’t believe them but I am intrigued hey Christina did you feel that death stare I was like you better stop when you finish I stopped um I could I I could like I I um I always wonder how much does it produce and then I challenge myself and say does it matter how much isn’t any enough um I also am challenged with I don’t want the mess so I don’t know if I have a real opinion on them it feels like you know even beyond the advertisements like people are pretty happy with them when I see them talk about them well let me say this um first of all it’s not about how much they produce it’s about how much you produce so that’s the questions how much scraps are you making and how much is so do I doubt that it’s going to make them no I don’t doubt that it’s going to make it but I just did a Google search for um countertop composters and for $300 I will never find out what they C what they produce um I’m seeing them for anywhere from 50 to $400 most of them around the $200 to $300 range um the the the thing for me is the amount of compost that it can hold is just not worth doing for me um I you know you need a lot more compost than that it seems kind of like a a gimmick if you ask me personally now if you live in a big city and you don’t have anywhere I think it’s it’s a good thing to do um you know cut down on waist whatever and you have a container garden oh look this Falls right into the show you have a container garden on your back porch then yeah maybe you can you can just start another bucket and kind of keep it on hand but um I don’t really I don’t really put a lot of stock into them I just don’t think it’s worth it so the part about you know how much I think I felt like we said the same thing like how much can it make how much can it produce like based on the size that’s what I was talking about um what do you think about composting inside of your garden have you seen that like when people dig a hole and dump stuff in right there oh yeah I’ve done that I mean yeah that’s fine I don’t have a problem with that I you know um for me in my area it attracts pests so I try that’s why I have a separate pile completely um and the thing is my pile cost me zero so there is that aspect of it um I just you know it it’s going to do what it needs to do it’s going to rotate the pile for you probably turns it into a heck of a lot faster than I can do it because it’s going to turn it automatically for you it’s going to you know do everything it needs to do um but I’m I’m with bavia too I just don’t want to do that into my house we already have a bucket for composting which you know it gets questionable at times if we don’t empty it enough um but otherwise like I just I’m not interested so um it’s a good I don’t know man it was a good idea let me put it that way but again it’s just not for the gardener I get it and I think there could be some level of fun to it like look at what this thing produces maybe it’s a entryway into um composting um I somebody who doesn’t like to compost you know if someone will let me finish a thought right where you are on on this podcast trying to embarrass me um not an entry way for me I I have um I know me well enough to know like it’s not something I would keep up with I don’t think I would I don’t know maybe if if one of my good girlfriends listening and they’re trying to figure out what to get me in the you know for my birthday I don’t $300 though that’s freaking steep man buy me a 300 want anyone to spend $300 on that for me well and the thing is though I think um I had a thought and I lost it what did you say you said that it’s not for you you wouldn’t use it that’s the thing is it it gets the consistency yeah the consistency of using it so like when we first started composting and even today like I I’ll open the trash can I’ll be like why’d you throw the coffee grounds away oh well I didn’t think about it I’m like how you got think about it we’ve been composting for like 15 years at this point like but I mean it’s it’s it’s a habit that you get into as far as like composting your material IAL and stuff like that so um you would get into the habit of it eventually or you just throw it away you know for me when I throw mine away if I decided to quit it would be thrown away a plastic bucket not a $15 you know we’ve been reusing this or $300 we’ve been reusing the same plastic bucket for like five years now so I think we’ve gotten our our mileage out of it but if anybody else is using them and they like them let us know but I just don’t think it it can produce the amount of compost that one would need for the garden and then you have to worry about storing it and all that other stuff so I’m not overly concerned about it yeah there you go so if you want to be like Christina and leave us a question we urge you to use our email address byg question no s at the end because somebody already has that whatever at gmail.com or you can do it on our Facebook page or wherever else you do just make sure you label it question of the day and if we don’t get to it it’s because we just couldn’t keep track of it but we do our best and we’d love to get your questions and answer them on the air and if you’d like to support the show you can do so by ordering some seeds using the discount code get yourself a pre a free pack of seeds and 10% off you can become a subscriber and get their extra monthly episode or you can get the planter app and show them some support we do not get a commission off of it but we are happy for them to continue to grow so um on note everybody remember this we’re going to learn to grow and grow for change see you now you know why people feel like celebrating at Harvest Time all over the world people have feasting and good times when the crops have been gathered in thanks for checking out the show if you like what we’re doing and you like to support us you can become a patron at patreon.com Gardens or you can be an apple subscriber and in both of those you’ll get an extra episode every month you can also make a one-time PayPal donation with the link below and you can get all kinds of gardening gear like t-shirts and mugs and cups from the link below at Teespring and we have an Amazon store which has all the products that we use and recommend in our Gardens and it helps support our show and we also add to this list periodically so be sure to check it out periodically to see if there’s anything that you need for your garden everything that you do including a like and a subscribe and even a review will help us learn to grow and grow for change see you