Oooh, great tutorial on the installation of your drip-irrigation. Love the individual valves. Your Travis' bed topping mix sounds like a great combo! Thanks for another great lesson! 😊
Dang bro. 20 minutes ain't long enough. This is some exciting stuff. I think once a month maybe you should do an extended training. I'm sure, all your top fans will be there. The beds look absolutely Fantastic. Thank you for doing it right. Thank you for taking your time and not shortcutting the process. God Bless your efforts. May he take you to a whole nother level.
Mel's Mix is used for the Square Foot gardening by Mel Bartholomew, he started many, many years ago. You should be able to do a search on you tube for information on it, yet another gardening type of growing a garden!
Mushroom compost is heaven on earth for the garden. I'm fortunate to live by a very large mushroom farm and the sell the compost 4 bobcat buckets for $35.
Looking great! I think you are gonna get a great harvest. I'd to thank you and the family for sharing your journey and knowledge. Also I really like how you not only share your knowledge but you are open to learning from others. Not very many people are like that. One simply can't know everything. Some act like they do. Thank you for being who you're. God Bless!
Always enjoy your videos! Was running out of time so bought a bunch of brassicas, & direct sowed acorn & spaghetti squash, beets, carrots, Hamburg parsley, & Nappa Cabbage!
Hi Lazy Dog Farm. I have a few comments about preparing the irrigation piping for the raised beds. 1. If the part with the tap was outside the bed, you would save space for planting. 2. When there is a central faucet for each bed, you don't need faucets for each drip pipe, it saves money. 3. At the water pressure you have (up to 2.5 atmospheres), you don't need to use expensive threaded connections, there are cheap and good connections that cost less than a dollar and put them together with light pressure and they hold very well and do not leak. I lived for 20 years working in gardening in containers, planters and large pots in the city that we grew on flat roofs and balconies. Each such garden was watered by drippers and a computerized automatic system that was opened every day, or every two days, depending on the type of mixture we planted in and the direction of the sun relative to the garden. There is no need to turn on the water for a whole night, only after planting you must water well until saturation, after that 20 minutes is enough up to half an hour.
We certainly do have to water all night sometimes. When it's dry around here and we have corn planted, it takes an all night watering to keep it happy. Onions like the all night watering as well. And it's very helpful when getting carrots to germinate as they like constant soil moisture for 7 days or more after planting.
@@LazyDogFarm I don't know the weather conditions in your place, here we are in the eastern Mediterranean, the summer is long, hot and dry and the winter is short and rainy, usually the winter starts at the end of September and the beginning of October, the first rain will be on the 14th of the month. When growing in large containers, the living conditions of the plants are very different from the conditions in the ground, the bigger and higher the container/planter, the longer they hold water. Please be sensitive to this.
Haha. I like Trav's mix. Mel is for Mel Bartholomew, he is best known for the square-foot gardening technique for all of us that are trying to grow as much as we can in a small space. I personally use his mix as a starting point and kind of move it to what I can get that makes sense to me. I personally feel this mix is a little too peat heavy sometimes, but peat is cheaper than compost when starting out. You are really a plumber at heart. I pat myself on the back because I put a sprinkler out to start my seed in place of my hand watering this fall.
Seaweed for a mix of micronutrients. I'm fortunate to live near the ocean so my supply is limited only by what I can easily lug home. We apply it directly to the soil fresh or dried and add it to compost bins to give them an extra kick. I right now have piles of bladderwrack and kelp for my gardening clients drying on my back porch and being smelly.
I can tell you are excited about the raised bed gardening. I really like my raised beds and I've found it very easy to get mine fertile without buying a lot of organic fertilizer. Having composted chicken manure from my chickens has been great. I have put in a little bone meal for the root crops, but their roots haven't tapped that yet, plus it's a slow release and should be real good by the time the onions start to bulb. I cut the bottom out of a 50 gal tote and turned it into a raised bed. I did have to drive some rebar down the sides to keep it from bulging out on the sides. Where there's a will, there's a way. It's in the back of the garden because it's ugly lol.
Great job Travis. My only recommendation would be to add worm castings from your worm farm, and Azomite for micronutrients. I really like how your raised bed plot looks and I bet you will be happy with the results.
I add azomite to my spent soil every year along with the other amendments. All my beds and grow bags have fat worms in them, which tells me they like the living quarters and the organic matter.
@@tnjon66 Because the raised beds are in direct contact with the ground, there will be some natural worm populations that will make their way in the container. Those native worms stay deep in the ground so they won’t really make their way up very far. The Red Wigglers are composting worms that hang out in the top 18” of soil, but require a steady diet of food material. Without a food source, Red Wigglers will leave the raised beds in search of more fertile options. Pulling castings from the worm farm and spreading in the raised beds is one of the best things you can do for your plants.
To reduce the wasted space, you could have the source line come up and turn either right or left so it runs parallel to the end (instead of perpendicular like you have it), then put your valve along the end close the wall. Run a little more tubing to the corner and then do a U-turn and run a single feed line back the other way. In such a small bed it won't matter if the water source is centered. The drip emitters are setup to only allow a fixed flow rate anyway.
If you had beds that weren't rounded on the end, it would make it a lot easier. You could then put the vertical riser in the corner with hardly no wasted space. Curved ends make it a little more tricky.
After watching you cut that main line I think I figured out why my line cracked, I think when my beds settled after filling the bottom of the bed cut into the line and caused it to crack and leak after the first year, it was so small at first I didn't know it but after the 2nd year it got worse and I could actually see it though the mulch. Am going to do what you suggested and fit a new line up the side of them. Wish me luck.
It's all looking good, Travis. It will look really nice with that mulch around the bins. Look forward to seeing everything growing and hope y'all get some rain soon.
I’ve done raised bed irrigation like that before, to use the wasted space, I just put a dripper on a piece of 1/4” tube to the plants behind the supply line.
It's the same as potting soil. People over react to conifer wood fines and bark....its not enough the make the soil acidic, you have a better chance of that happening with peatmoss. Over the last 15 years I've been chipping pine wood from thinning out a wooded lot I own, the chips were all composted and went into my raised beds and paths, and my vegetables are bountiful and delicious.
For the end wasted space just plug in s short 1/4 inch line with a 1/2gph emitter at the end. Place as many as you need based on what is planted there.
Thanks for the great video, Travis! I have set up my raised bed irrigation exactly like yours.and it works great. Right now, I have my system connected to a water hose from my house. As a more permanent and easier solution, I want to install a line from my main water line to my garden and connect my irrigation system to that. My plan is to install a frost proof hydrant, then connect an automatic water timer (with zones) to my irrigation system, making it pretty much automated. My concern is leaving the hydrant "on" 24/7 during gardening season. I am not sure if leaving the hydrant on all the time is a bad thing to do or not. I am curious how you do this, and if you have any advice. Thanks!
A fertilizer I found last year was Coop Poop. It has a NPK that I like for root veggies (not too much N) and is pretty cheap for organic. It also has calcium and magnesium at good levels. You can get it at Ace Hardware, but you might consider distributing it as well. I like the raised beds! Wish I had the space to plant like you do, but I’m on a half acre lot. My savanna mustards have gotten their true leaves….can’t wait to taste them.
Funny story ... A couple years ago we were on the way to the mountains camping and we took our usual route through the backroads to get on the interstate near Cordele. Had no idea that 100 mile long yard sale was happening. So many folks would just slow down on the road instead of pulling over and stopping. It took us forever to finally get on the interstate.
@@LazyDogFarm lol, I bet. We started in unidilla and drove through moultrie ( back road) on the way to 75. I do it every year, it’s a lot of fun. This year was the most folks I have ever seen however. I’m a junkaholic lol. Have a great week brother.
Travis everything is looking 👍. Just a thought. You might want to have some micro boost to use in case some of your plants show signs of nutrient differences. John S.
The Agrothrive liquid fertilizer we use has quite a bit of micronutrients in it. We'll start using some of that once the plants overcome any transplant shock and start growing.
I thought you could of used more of the virgin soil from the plot to the top of the beds, but you can always brush away the mulch and add in later after soil settles and drops a little. That space you can’t water you may be able to get around it but insisting half sprays facing down on the lines after the on off valves main line. Then you can pant in that space as well.
@@LazyDogFarm that doesn’t help Travis. Perhaps some coffee grounds will help in small amounts hold moisture and is not acidic. Correct about pine bark and also pine needles can decrease ph chart to a higher acidity level
You can find some great deals at Lowes bought 20 bags 4lbs each of that Dr Earth acid lovers fertilizer for $3.88 ea last year it has the Trubiotic with Mycorrhizae my plants love this stuff.
At the end of this experiment it might be interesting to notice that the soil under raised-beds isn't as deep as the fields. I had dug down & the dark compost was gone from those lower horizons the next year, probably from all the additional sulfur in the surplus of decomposing-organics. RB do offer more oxidized-soil but with iron-lockout I'm thinking I want a wicking-bed to possibly get more hours of iron-availability in the dry-season, & possibly less washout-deficiencies after heavy rain storms. I'm still don't fully comprehend the chemistry but one day I will.
You could put 2 gal per hour drip emitters on the back side of your main lines and plant in that space. You have invested so much time and expense in your beds that it seems a bad waste to not plant everywhere you can.
Hey, Trav. How was that composted hardwood mulch? Did it have a lot of mycelia already in it? I know I use hardwood mulch in all my garden paths and it is definitely a breeding ground for all kinds of different funguses. So I just wonder if you already have a lot of that fungal net work in there or not? Anyway, I am a raised bed gardener and I use straight compost in all of my beds. Every year I amend with more compost or clean out from my chicken coop, broken down straw from my straw bale garden, that kind of thing. I think the key is to use a variety of different types of nutrients to keep that soil teeming with life. Looks like your off to a good start!
I couldn't see any mycelia in it, but I figure it's a good breeding ground for it. They gave me the wood chips, just had to pay for them to bring it to me.
@@LazyDogFarm man, wish I had THAT kind of friend…my compost was about as far away free as you could get.🤣🤣 Thankfully, I don’t have to fill the beds every year! It’ll be fun to see how yours works out. 👍
Since you added valves on each drip tape then isn't the valve after the elbow into the raised bed redundant. Without the valve after the elbow you then wouldn't loose that space for planting.
Not if the rutabagas are done before the cabbage or vice versa. The individual drip tape valves are useful when planting different crops in a bed. In the cases where we'll be planting the same thing in the entire bed, no need for those row start valves.
I am hoping you can tell me what drip tape you use- mill thickess, GPH, and distance between emitters. I have only 175’ to do in my 4by8 beds so anything but a couple of 100’ ft packs will work for us. Kinda worried about pressure issues. Thanks Trav and Brooklyn!
Man I used one of those bags of black velvet in one of my raised beds and I do NOT like that stuff. The bag I got had a bunch of really big pieces of wood chips and whatever else. It looked good when I first laid it down but it seems like it dries out real fast and all the big chunks float to the top. I also never really mulched that bed so maybe that has something to do with it. I figured all those big chunks would’ve acted like a mulch but I was wrong, anyway that was my experience with that stuff lol.
Each man must decide for himself where beauty lies. The Mel and Travis wing of the party lean too heavily to the organic component side at the expense of the soil and mineral side, I believe. Best be getting some micro-nutrients in there, whether from Azomite or kelp meal. I also use a manifold system on the beds but with 6" and 12" o.c. spaghetti tube. If you need a little tubing to water those dead zones, I'd be happy to oblige.
The more I grow in that no-till plot, the more I lean towards having more fungal associations and organic matter in the soil. A shot of Agrothrive once the transplants start growing will provide a plethora of micronutrients.
@@LazyDogFarm A soils report taken from today's mix is going to look a lot different than one taken after your mycorrhizal inoculation and a period of mellowing to establish the fungal network. It may be Spring before those beds really cook on their own.
@@markware4933 It certainly takes time to establish. We'll have to go a little heavier on the Nature Safe and Agrothrive (which is full of micros) until then.
I’m curious, the taller beds are really tall, what is the benefit of the taller ones? What would be planted in those that would not do as well in the shorter beds?
Without excessive tannins they offers a deeper soil-horizon of alkaline-soil. You'd add more elemental-sulfur to oxidize the organics in larger quantities then possible in short-soil. I haven't figured out how to prevent the iron-deficiencies after heavy-storms though, maybe I need more elemental-sulfur. One goal might be to produce more soil-amino-acids instead of the plant only having access to inorganic-compounds.
Wow. With all those expense’s that will be some high dollar produce. Especially for a small space like a raised bed that is so limited. I wonder how long it would take to get your money back on such a large initial investment.
I’m surprised you added soil from your existing garden. I know you are pretty religious on weed reduction and reducing your seed bank but it seems to me that adding that soil is adding a lot of dormant seeds to your beds. Big plus to raised beds are starting with sterile soil.
Looks sharp Travis. I get mycorrhiza from seven springs. Good price and works great as dry inoculent or water in every 4-6 weeks. Guess I’d go for some African night crawlers and chop and drop in those beds. After a year you won’t even need to add any fertilizer. Just a suggestion for those awesome raised beds. Check out RockDustLocal, every since I added their char-rock my beds have never done better. Biochar,basalt,crushed granite really seems to hold nutrients and improved soil texture. Plus I add azomite. Up here in the frozen tundra “Minnesota “ I lightly amend my beds in the fall for spring planting
You are using too many fittings for those beds, Put your main line on the side (about where your terminator is now) the valve then main line, have it follow the curved part of the bed. Then you only need one termination and one 90 per bed you save a tee and termination in every bed. And you don't wates any bed space I personally use the drip line in my beds but it does the same thing as the tape Also don't spend to much time making the bed even on the drip lines the bed will settle 2 to 8 inches every year depending on what you have in there as it all breaks down just top up in-between plantings/seasons
Mel's Mix is substandard. It does not support good soil biology. In addition peat is not a good outdoor media. There are so many issues that I can't begin to explain it here. Stick with your mix.
I am very surprised at your reaction to Mel's mix it sounds like you want to discredit him every gardener I watch uses Mel's mix his name is Mel Baerholemew and he invented square foot gardening the mix is a cheaper more nutritious way to fill your raised beds and containers so you can plant 4 plants in a square foot and it works great I have been watching him over 30 yrs that stagreen has diaper material in it to hold water and it doesn't work well especially if that's all you are using hope this info will get Mel some respect
Wasn't trying to discredit him at all. Just explaining that I had never heard of it until some viewers mentioned it in the comments. I know he's helped a lot of gardeners for a long, long time.
Oooh, great tutorial on the installation of your drip-irrigation. Love the individual valves. Your Travis' bed topping mix sounds like a great combo! Thanks for another great lesson! 😊
Man those beds are “purty”! You’ve really worked hard of getting it all set up. I truly hope it brings you many years of vegetation. 🎉 🥬 🍅 ☀️👩🌾
I hope so too!
I’m giving “Trav’s Mix’ a big thumbs up! Similar to what I do!
Dang bro. 20 minutes ain't long enough. This is some exciting stuff. I think once a month maybe you should do an extended training. I'm sure, all your top fans will be there. The beds look absolutely Fantastic. Thank you for doing it right. Thank you for taking your time and not shortcutting the process. God Bless your efforts. May he take you to a whole nother level.
Thanks Lerone! Glad you've enjoyed seeing the process!
Mel's Mix is used for the Square Foot gardening by Mel Bartholomew, he started many, many years ago. You should be able to do a search on you tube for information on it, yet another gardening type of growing a garden!
The plant spacing in Mel's book would lend it self well to raise beds.
Square foot gardening
Travs mix sounds great! 👍🏻
Mushroom compost is heaven on earth for the garden. I'm fortunate to live by a very large mushroom farm and the sell the compost 4 bobcat buckets for $35.
Lucky you!
Woah! That's an amazing price! 😊
Looking great! I think you are gonna get a great harvest. I'd to thank you and the family for sharing your journey and knowledge. Also I really like how you not only share your knowledge but you are open to learning from others. Not very many people are like that. One simply can't know everything. Some act like they do. Thank you for being who you're. God Bless!
Thanks Paul!
Mel Bartholemew the square foot gardening guy
Thank you!
Trav you could put perennial herbs at the wasted space places they don't require as much water and could survive only on the rain you get occasionally
Not a bad idea at all!
Always enjoy your videos! Was running out of time so bought a bunch of brassicas, & direct sowed acorn & spaghetti squash, beets, carrots, Hamburg parsley, & Nappa Cabbage!
Hi Lazy Dog Farm.
I have a few comments about preparing the irrigation piping for the raised beds. 1. If the part with the tap was outside the bed, you would save space for planting. 2. When there is a central faucet for each bed, you don't need faucets for each drip pipe, it saves money. 3. At the water pressure you have (up to 2.5 atmospheres), you don't need to use expensive threaded connections, there are cheap and good connections that cost less than a dollar and put them together with light pressure and they hold very well and do not leak.
I lived for 20 years working in gardening in containers, planters and large pots in the city that we grew on flat roofs and balconies. Each such garden was watered by drippers and a computerized automatic system that was opened every day, or every two days, depending on the type of mixture we planted in and the direction of the sun relative to the garden. There is no need to turn on the water for a whole night, only after planting you must water well until saturation, after that 20 minutes is enough up to half an hour.
We certainly do have to water all night sometimes. When it's dry around here and we have corn planted, it takes an all night watering to keep it happy. Onions like the all night watering as well. And it's very helpful when getting carrots to germinate as they like constant soil moisture for 7 days or more after planting.
@@LazyDogFarm
I don't know the weather conditions in your place, here we are in the eastern Mediterranean, the summer is long, hot and dry and the winter is short and rainy, usually the winter starts at the end of September and the beginning of October, the first rain will be on the 14th of the month. When growing in large containers, the living conditions of the plants are very different from the conditions in the ground, the bigger and higher the container/planter, the longer they hold water. Please be sensitive to this.
Outstanding stuff👍. Really looking forward to see things in a couple months.
I got some a few days go which is 1yd of Murray blend and 3 yd top soil.
Haha. I like Trav's mix. Mel is for Mel Bartholomew, he is best known for the square-foot gardening technique for all of us that are trying to grow as much as we can in a small space. I personally use his mix as a starting point and kind of move it to what I can get that makes sense to me. I personally feel this mix is a little too peat heavy sometimes, but peat is cheaper than compost when starting out. You are really a plumber at heart. I pat myself on the back because I put a sprinkler out to start my seed in place of my hand watering this fall.
Haha. I'm pretty terrible at actual plumbing, but I've done enough of this drip stuff to eventually get the hang of it.
Seaweed for a mix of micronutrients. I'm fortunate to live near the ocean so my supply is limited only by what I can easily lug home. We apply it directly to the soil fresh or dried and add it to compost bins to give them an extra kick.
I right now have piles of bladderwrack and kelp for my gardening clients drying on my back porch and being smelly.
I can tell you are excited about the raised bed gardening. I really like my raised beds and I've found it very easy to get mine fertile without buying a lot of organic fertilizer. Having composted chicken manure from my chickens has been great. I have put in a little bone meal for the root crops, but their roots haven't tapped that yet, plus it's a slow release and should be real good by the time the onions start to bulb. I cut the bottom out of a 50 gal tote and turned it into a raised bed. I did have to drive some rebar down the sides to keep it from bulging out on the sides. Where there's a will, there's a way. It's in the back of the garden because it's ugly lol.
You could put individual 1/4” drip lines at the back of the main line so you could plant in that area.
Yes 1/4" tubing with a adjustable bubbler would work only like 50 cent to 60 cent now with 20 percent off sale.
They look great! Thanks for showing how to set this up!
Great job. Looks like it was well thought out. Should last many, many years to come. Happy Gardening.
Thanks, you too!
Great job Travis. My only recommendation would be to add worm castings from your worm farm, and Azomite for micronutrients. I really like how your raised bed plot looks and I bet you will be happy with the results.
I add azomite to my spent soil every year along with the other amendments. All my beds and grow bags have fat worms in them, which tells me they like the living quarters and the organic matter.
I think if he added worms to the beds it would turn into a majority of castings.
@@tnjon66 Because the raised beds are in direct contact with the ground, there will be some natural worm populations that will make their way in the container. Those native worms stay deep in the ground so they won’t really make their way up very far. The Red Wigglers are composting worms that hang out in the top 18” of soil, but require a steady diet of food material. Without a food source, Red Wigglers will leave the raised beds in search of more fertile options. Pulling castings from the worm farm and spreading in the raised beds is one of the best things you can do for your plants.
No acidity issue as long as the pine is fully composted. Most compost is pH neutral.
I bought the blue Ollie's as soon as you displayed them on your initial video. They are gorgeous!!
Glad you like them!
I like that you are going with what you know when it comes to irrigation. You can make adjustments down the road if needed.
For sure. With the system we have in place, we can easily alter what comes after the valve at the top of each bed.
To reduce the wasted space, you could have the source line come up and turn either right or left so it runs parallel to the end (instead of perpendicular like you have it), then put your valve along the end close the wall. Run a little more tubing to the corner and then do a U-turn and run a single feed line back the other way. In such a small bed it won't matter if the water source is centered. The drip emitters are setup to only allow a fixed flow rate anyway.
Good reply. I was working on something along the same idea before I saw your post.
If you had beds that weren't rounded on the end, it would make it a lot easier. You could then put the vertical riser in the corner with hardly no wasted space. Curved ends make it a little more tricky.
After watching you cut that main line I think I figured out why my line cracked, I think when my beds settled after filling the bottom of the bed cut into the line and caused it to crack and leak after the first year, it was so small at first I didn't know it but after the 2nd year it got worse and I could actually see it though the mulch. Am going to do what you suggested and fit a new line up the side of them. Wish me luck.
I could see that happening. That's why I made a furrow for the underground mainline, so hopefully that doesn't happen.
The way you set up your drip is great.
Thanks PJ!
"Mel" is Mel Bartholomew, inventor and author of "Square Foot Gardening". Mel's Mix is his recommended soil for his raised bed gardens
Great job, you inspired me to set up a irrigation system in my raised troughs, I just have to plan it out.
Go for it!
It's all looking good, Travis. It will look really nice with that mulch around the bins. Look forward to seeing everything growing and hope y'all get some rain soon.
Thanks y'all!
Looks good and thumbs up on your mix.
Thanks 👍
I’ve done raised bed irrigation like that before, to use the wasted space, I just put a dripper on a piece of 1/4” tube to the plants behind the supply line.
I can do that. Thanks for the idea!
Your worm castings will put those fungi in the soil as well.
I swear by mushroom compost. I dont know biology but i know it does alot for soil health. The travs mix may be a new fave though.
It's the same as potting soil. People over react to conifer wood fines and bark....its not enough the make the soil acidic, you have a better chance of that happening with peatmoss. Over the last 15 years I've been chipping pine wood from thinning out a wooded lot I own, the chips were all composted and went into my raised beds and paths, and my vegetables are bountiful and delicious.
For the end wasted space just plug in s short 1/4 inch line with a 1/2gph emitter at the end. Place as many as you need based on what is planted there.
Great job!
Thanks!
mel invented square foot gardening
Makes sense. I found that website, but wasn't sure.
Thanks for the great video, Travis! I have set up my raised bed irrigation exactly like yours.and it works great. Right now, I have my system connected to a water hose from my house. As a more permanent and easier solution, I want to install a line from my main water line to my garden and connect my irrigation system to that. My plan is to install a frost proof hydrant, then connect an automatic water timer (with zones) to my irrigation system, making it pretty much automated. My concern is leaving the hydrant "on" 24/7 during gardening season. I am not sure if leaving the hydrant on all the time is a bad thing to do or not. I am curious how you do this, and if you have any advice. Thanks!
Put ya some marigolds where that empty space is, that will do 2 things. Repel some bugs and hide the shut off valve! Oh, and be pretty!
Mels mix huh..mico dyno....well algorithm fed...something learned.
A fertilizer I found last year was Coop Poop. It has a NPK that I like for root veggies (not too much N) and is pretty cheap for organic. It also has calcium and magnesium at good levels. You can get it at Ace Hardware, but you might consider distributing it as well.
I like the raised beds! Wish I had the space to plant like you do, but I’m on a half acre lot.
My savanna mustards have gotten their true leaves….can’t wait to taste them.
You're gonna love those mustard greens!
I’m going to try to avoid overhead watering my raised beds this summer (Australia) as it promotes too much weed growth in between the beds.
It certainly does that.
Looking good Trav! We were in your neck of the woods on Saturday. We did the peanut picking garage sale.
Funny story ... A couple years ago we were on the way to the mountains camping and we took our usual route through the backroads to get on the interstate near Cordele. Had no idea that 100 mile long yard sale was happening. So many folks would just slow down on the road instead of pulling over and stopping. It took us forever to finally get on the interstate.
@@LazyDogFarm lol, I bet. We started in unidilla and drove through moultrie ( back road) on the way to 75. I do it every year, it’s a lot of fun. This year was the most folks I have ever seen however. I’m a junkaholic lol. Have a great week brother.
Great video. What size is your mainline tubing?
Travis everything is looking 👍.
Just a thought. You might want to have some micro boost to use in case some of your plants show signs of nutrient differences. John S.
The Agrothrive liquid fertilizer we use has quite a bit of micronutrients in it. We'll start using some of that once the plants overcome any transplant shock and start growing.
I wonder if it’s worth setting up irrigation if you’ve just got a small garden.
I thought you could of used more of the virgin soil from the plot to the top of the beds, but you can always brush away the mulch and add in later after soil settles and drops a little.
That space you can’t water you may be able to get around it but insisting half sprays facing down on the lines after the on off valves main line.
Then you can pant in that space as well.
If it weren't so dry here, I definitely would have added more. But it was just so dry and compacted. Need some rain bad.
@@LazyDogFarm that doesn’t help Travis.
Perhaps some coffee grounds will help in small amounts hold moisture and is not acidic.
Correct about pine bark and also pine needles can decrease ph chart to a higher acidity level
The inventor of “square foot gardening” was Mel Bartholomew
You can find some great deals at Lowes bought 20 bags 4lbs each of that Dr Earth acid lovers fertilizer for $3.88 ea last year it has the Trubiotic with Mycorrhizae my plants love this stuff.
That is a good idea. Not sure I've seen the Dr. Earth stuff here.
Mel Bartholomew-father of square foot gardening
At the end of this experiment it might be interesting to notice that the soil under raised-beds isn't as deep as the fields. I had dug down & the dark compost was gone from those lower horizons the next year, probably from all the additional sulfur in the surplus of decomposing-organics. RB do offer more oxidized-soil but with iron-lockout I'm thinking I want a wicking-bed to possibly get more hours of iron-availability in the dry-season, & possibly less washout-deficiencies after heavy rain storms. I'm still don't fully comprehend the chemistry but one day I will.
I'm sure we'll have to keep layering each year.
Hey Travis, what hose bib splitter do you like to use? The one I currently have tends to leak.
Yeah none of them are great, but I've got a brass one that works okay. Can't remember where I got it.
You could put 2 gal per hour drip emitters on the back side of your main lines and plant in that space. You have invested so much time and expense in your beds that it seems a bad waste to not plant everywhere you can.
Put a couple flowers at the ends 😢where the drip starts for pollinators so no space is wasted
Hey, Trav. How was that composted hardwood mulch? Did it have a lot of mycelia already in it? I know I use hardwood mulch in all my garden paths and it is definitely a breeding ground for all kinds of different funguses. So I just wonder if you already have a lot of that fungal net work in there or not? Anyway, I am a raised bed gardener and I use straight compost in all of my beds. Every year I amend with more compost or clean out from my chicken coop, broken down straw from my straw bale garden, that kind of thing. I think the key is to use a variety of different types of nutrients to keep that soil teeming with life. Looks like your off to a good start!
I couldn't see any mycelia in it, but I figure it's a good breeding ground for it. They gave me the wood chips, just had to pay for them to bring it to me.
@@LazyDogFarm man, wish I had THAT kind of friend…my compost was about as far away free as you could get.🤣🤣 Thankfully, I don’t have to fill the beds every year! It’ll be fun to see how yours works out. 👍
I hear the ducks 🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆
Since you added valves on each drip tape then isn't the valve after the elbow into the raised bed redundant. Without the valve after the elbow you then wouldn't loose that space for planting.
Not if the rutabagas are done before the cabbage or vice versa. The individual drip tape valves are useful when planting different crops in a bed. In the cases where we'll be planting the same thing in the entire bed, no need for those row start valves.
I am hoping you can tell me what drip tape you use- mill thickess, GPH, and distance between emitters. I have only 175’ to do in my 4by8 beds so anything but a couple of 100’ ft packs will work for us. Kinda worried about pressure issues. Thanks Trav and Brooklyn!
Here's a blog with all the pieces and links that we used: lazydogfarm.com/blogs/garden-journal/raised-bed-drip-irrigation-system
@@LazyDogFarm It links to a bunch of P1 Ultra 5/8" Drip Tape with a bunch of options. What options do you use on a 4 by 8 bed?
@@TheThewelshes For a raised bed, I'd go with the 15 mil tape with a 6" emitter spacing.
did you use 3/4" or 1/2" tubing for your mainline?
1/2"
MiGardner had a baby boy 👦
Congrats to him!
👍
👍🏻
Man I used one of those bags of black velvet in one of my raised beds and I do NOT like that stuff. The bag I got had a bunch of really big pieces of wood chips and whatever else. It looked good when I first laid it down but it seems like it dries out real fast and all the big chunks float to the top. I also never really mulched that bed so maybe that has something to do with it. I figured all those big chunks would’ve acted like a mulch but I was wrong, anyway that was my experience with that stuff lol.
Each man must decide for himself where beauty lies. The Mel and Travis wing of the party lean too heavily to the organic component side at the expense of the soil and mineral side, I believe. Best be getting some micro-nutrients in there, whether from Azomite or kelp meal. I also use a manifold system on the beds but with 6" and 12" o.c. spaghetti tube. If you need a little tubing to water those dead zones, I'd be happy to oblige.
The more I grow in that no-till plot, the more I lean towards having more fungal associations and organic matter in the soil. A shot of Agrothrive once the transplants start growing will provide a plethora of micronutrients.
@@LazyDogFarm A soils report taken from today's mix is going to look a lot different than one taken after your mycorrhizal inoculation and a period of mellowing to establish the fungal network. It may be Spring before those beds really cook on their own.
@@markware4933 It certainly takes time to establish. We'll have to go a little heavier on the Nature Safe and Agrothrive (which is full of micros) until then.
in the "Square Foot" growing system 1 SQq. foot per cabbage and 4 rutabagas per sq. foot.
4 rutabagas per square foot seems like a lot, but I guess it depends on how big a rutabaga you want to grow. lol
Cant find the micro dyno on amazon...or anything else google sends me...can u give us a link...maybe who makes it?
Here's a link: amzn.to/3RSyuCE
Mel is short for mel bartholomew square foot gardening author.
Go get yourself a pair of Milwaukee poly cutters and thank me later.
I’m curious, the taller beds are really tall, what is the benefit of the taller ones? What would be planted in those that would not do as well in the shorter beds?
I have wondered the same thing
Planting things like spinach, beets which are hard to maintain/pick in lower beds. His previous video explains this.
Less bending over / kneeling
Without excessive tannins they offers a deeper soil-horizon of alkaline-soil. You'd add more elemental-sulfur to oxidize the organics in larger quantities then possible in short-soil. I haven't figured out how to prevent the iron-deficiencies after heavy-storms though, maybe I need more elemental-sulfur. One goal might be to produce more soil-amino-acids instead of the plant only having access to inorganic-compounds.
@@bmilhansen if that’s the reason I’d definitely do a hugelkulture style in those beds, kind of a waste of compost, even if the compost was free.
Wow. With all those expense’s that will be some high dollar produce. Especially for a small space like a raised bed that is so limited. I wonder how long it would take to get your money back on such a large initial investment.
I’m surprised you added soil from your existing garden. I know you are pretty religious on weed reduction and reducing your seed bank but it seems to me that adding that soil is adding a lot of dormant seeds to your beds. Big plus to raised beds are starting with sterile soil.
Might have a few volunteer soybean plants in there, but I don't expect much else. I'd rather have the nitrogen and pull a few weeds.
Looks sharp Travis. I get mycorrhiza from seven springs. Good price and works great as dry inoculent or water in every 4-6 weeks. Guess I’d go for some African night crawlers and chop and drop in those beds. After a year you won’t even need to add any fertilizer. Just a suggestion for those awesome raised beds. Check out RockDustLocal, every since I added their char-rock my beds have never done better. Biochar,basalt,crushed granite really seems to hold nutrients and improved soil texture. Plus I add azomite. Up here in the frozen tundra “Minnesota “ I lightly amend my beds in the fall for spring planting
I definitely would like to have a thriving worm community in the beds eventually.
We use Azomite rather than native soil for minerals.
You are using too many fittings for those beds, Put your main line on the side (about where your terminator is now) the valve then main line, have it follow the curved part of the bed. Then you only need one termination and one 90 per bed you save a tee and termination in every bed. And you don't wates any bed space
I personally use the drip line in my beds but it does the same thing as the tape
Also don't spend to much time making the bed even on the drip lines the bed will settle 2 to 8 inches every year depending on what you have in there as it all breaks down just top up in-between plantings/seasons
You could've had basically no weeds if you didnt add the soil
I'll have basically no weeds with the soil. Maybe a few volunteer soybeans, but they'll die this winter anyways.
Very cool.
Too many valves one on side of bed no t or all that work
Mel's Mix is substandard. It does not support good soil biology. In addition peat is not a good outdoor media. There are so many issues that I can't begin to explain it here. Stick with your mix.
I am very surprised at your reaction to Mel's mix it sounds like you want to discredit him every gardener I watch uses Mel's mix his name is Mel Baerholemew and he invented square foot gardening the mix is a cheaper more nutritious way to fill your raised beds and containers so you can plant 4 plants in a square foot and it works great I have been watching him over 30 yrs that stagreen has diaper material in it to hold water and it doesn't work well especially if that's all you are using hope this info will get Mel some respect
Wasn't trying to discredit him at all. Just explaining that I had never heard of it until some viewers mentioned it in the comments. I know he's helped a lot of gardeners for a long, long time.