Hi everyone, it's gardening season again, at least here in the Bay Area.
I hope all of you who downloaded the vegetable planter box designs are starting to plant.
We've had over 1200 downloads, so I'm really excited.
I love the comments and emails.
Keep them coming in.
Now, what we're going to do today is I'm going to give a couple of tips on how to fill up your planter box,
because that's a common question I get.
Below here you'll see that there's a pretty good depth for the roots.
What I do is I fill up partway with lava rock to allow for drainage.
You can use other types of rock, but the idea is to get drainage.
Second, I put in soil and there's a couple of different amendments you can use.
Here I have some ground up eggshells and coffee grinds, which is always good.
And then here I have also chicken manure.
I like to use a bunch because sometimes you're not able to get enough coffee grinds or eggshells.
We're going to loosen it up and when you buy the plants, set them and space them out so you can see how many you want to fit.
I always get a little ambitious in this point and I always want to put more plants than I probably should,
but you get them all laid out.
It's going to be exciting.
I have some larger tomato plants.
I have some smaller ones.
I'll go in here and then also a yellow pepper plant as well.
What I'm going to do is I've loosened up the soil and this soil, sometimes on the ground you want to rotate things around,
but here what I'm doing is just adding additional manure and stuff to make sure there's plenty of nutrients
so that you get the nicest, ripest tomatoes.
Here I have some chicken manure and I'm going to put it around.
Now normally Clint helps me with this, but since he's behind the camera, he gets a pass.
Unfortunately in our yard because of the size of it, I tried to buy a composting box,
but it took up too much of the yard.
I'm sure most of you feel that way too because you're fulfilling these boxes.
It just did not really blend itself to composting.
I'm just going to continue to mix this in.
Try to get it deep in and if you have micro irrigation, just be careful you don't dig or damage that.
If you're interested in micro irrigation, I also have a video so you can check out some of my tips on micro irrigation.
That's great, especially if you travel like I do and sometimes you don't have time during the hot summer season to water all the time.
You really need to water every day once the season starts getting hot.
One thing I've been considering is building a cage around this.
I'm finding that animals are starting to eat my vegetable.
If I do that, I'll definitely post up my plans for that.
As I mentioned, chicken manure is one option.
The other is these eggshells that I've used a food processor to mix.
I'm just mixing in some of this as well.
It's almost like painting a canvas.
Nothing looks better than fresh soil and manure and eggshells.
It's just like a grown-up sandbox.
Some of you mentioned how this makes gardening much easier because you don't have to bend over.
This is one of the nice things about having it raised.
Although some of you have taken off the legs and used it that way as well.
We're going to put a bit more of this in here.
This has some coffee grind in it as well.
Then we're going to add some more potting soil to this.
What I'd like to do is generally get up to about here and dig deep holes for the actual tomato plants.
This is where having a spouse to help out is really, really good.
Unfortunately, mine is away at this point.
You want to loosen up some of the roots here so that it will go around.
I'm just going to bury it in here.
So wrap it around, hug it.
The other thing you want to do is if you bury it down deeper,
remove any of the leaves down here.
You see ones here.
Get rid of them.
Here you can see these ones are already starting to blossom a little.
You want to make sure that all the energy goes into producing tomatoes.
This is where I get out of line.
I should put these back on.
I'm also going to spend all day trying to get the dirt from under my nails.
Here's a little micro irrigation.
Definitely, if you have them put in earlier like last season, then check test them out afterwards as well.
There we go.
We have one done and several more to go.
We have all the tomato plants planted now.
As usual, I'll omit.
Sometimes I like to plant them or fit more plants than I'm supposed to.
But anyways, it hasn't hurt me in the past.
As we start to grow, make sure to tie it back.
And hopefully this summer, you'll be sharing recipes with me of what you're doing with your plants,
your vegetables, your tomatoes.
Check out Stark Silver Creek.
I've got a great tomato salad recipe up there.
So check it out.
Hockey gardening, have fun and send in photos to get some.
Bye.
It's going to be so simple.
Now you're all...
Okay, ready?
At least in the west.
You do not want to be doing this in your nicest clothes, but you all knew that.
