Container Gardening, Done Right | Off Grid Centrally Irrigated GroBuckets
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
- The video that made me want to get into RUclips! We get a lot of questions about our container gardening solution, as it's definitely uncommon, so hopefully this video does it justice. We grow well over a couple hundred plants in containers every year and this is how we do it.
Some people will likely find it interesting how we've scaled container gardening to a fairly large scale. We currently operate over 100 containers across our garden and it's essential in our cold climate gardening efforts. The biggest reason we use containers is to promote warmer soils and faster soil warmup times, a vital benefit when growing those warmer climate crops.
We grow a diverse set of plants in containers currently. All our warm weather stuff, including tomatoes, peppers, basil, corn and cucumbers see the biggest benefits, whether grown in the greenhouse or outdoors. We also grow beans, all of our herbs, production flowers (e.g. calendula) and usually at least one annual experiment every year. (This year's experiment is moringa!)
We were one of the first people in the world to centrally irrigate GroBuckets and we've kind of pioneered the path. Lots of people read our guide on the topic. So if you want more technical details and a build guide, you'll find it here:
frostygarden.com/topics/how-t...
If you're looking for more general information about our container gardening solution, we've detailed it here:
frostygarden.com/topics/grobu...
As always, you can find tons of cold climate gardening information, focusing on USDA zones 1 through 4 here:
FrostyGarden.com
Other relevant topics from our website?
Our Three Core Gardening Techniques:
frostygarden.com/topics/core-...
Container Gardening & Family Scale Food Production:
frostygarden.com/topics/conta...
Sub Irrigated Containers, The Highway To Gardening Success:
frostygarden.com/topics/grobu...
We want to thank everyone for the huge support on our last video, we finally have a 1K+ video! It has really inspired me to try and do an even better job and make even better videos. I'm really proud of how this latest video turned out, I think it does a good job covering our container gardens in their depth and breadth, but also with conciseness. Container gardening, for the purposes of home scale food production, is a fascinating topic to me. I hope others find it so, as well. Let us know if you enjoy seeing our techniques and if you have any questions!
Please lower or not play the background music. All that's needed is your voice and knowledge through the video. Thank you.
Will do. It sounds fine on our devices, but we're starting to learn there's big differences between different audio sources. We're brand new to video making, so we're trying to figure it out! Thanks.
Great video. Thanks for the info. I would like to hear this video without music. The music is okay for intro and outro but it distracting.
I second this. I'm hard of hearing, and sometimes struggle to separate the background from the voice.
We're down in Kasilof, AK, and are very happy to have found your site!
Keep up the videos and lose the music
Bravo! Ingenious design here!
Thank you! We really enjoy using it. Looking forward to setting everything back up again in a few months! Appreciate the watch & comment.
Wow! Wow! Wow! This is going to change my life! I live at 9,200 feet in Colorado and now understand what I failed to give enough importance- soil temperature! I was out there end of May sticking a soil thermometer in my raised beds (I created that knowing that it would allow soil to warm up faster) but even with raised beds - my soil was only 45 degrees. Ugh. I put black plastic down, didn’t do much at all - especially when I watered it with freezing cold water….gah. I get it! I am SO pumped to try this!!! I am commenting - which I usually wouldn’t do - but I want to support your channel with a ‘like’, a comment, and I’m sharing them! I was without internet for weeks, so went to the library in the small town near me, and joined RUclips for free for a month, so I could download them. Now I’m at the library commenting so it can help you out! Bravo!
Nice! Welcome to our channel! Appreciate the support! We have multiple efforts, that you've likely seen much of. Our website is the most in depth. Our Facebook channel is different than most garbage on Facebook, usually with daily posts through the growing season and intermittent posts outside of it. We "buck the norm" and usually have quality, 1 minute reads on there. We also replicate that to our blog, just in case you're not on Facebook. RUclips is the most "labor intensive" effort we do, so videos are much slower to produce. We usually try to tie them into our website somehow, but sometimes do alternative content as well. Blog is here: frostygarden.com/blog/
Hi from the Yukon! Thanks for posting
Hello there, fellow northern neighbor! Thanks for finding us, appreciate the comment and watch!
Now this is a no nonsense, practical, common sense approach to this subject. Gteat job Jeff, thank you!!
Thank you! We really love this system, it's been fantastic for us. Appreciate the watch & kind comment!
@@frostygarden907definitely going to try. Puzzled about not seeing an overflow flow. Would like to set up a system outside like you have on your deck but without an overflow hole what happens when you get a heavy rain. Wouldn't the buckets get water logged?
Yes, another container gardener! 🥰🌱❤️
Glad you found us! We've been doing it for a couple decades now. 🌻
I live in an apartment and don't have a hose on my deck to water my plants. Your system has really helped me think of watering solutions to my two 4x2 foot raised bed containers that I have on my deck. I'm so glad someone made a video about this type of watering. Very inspiring!
Glad you found it useful! Containers are an excellent container gardening solution, for sure! Appreciate the kind comment.
Like this type of video. Very information packed. This is great if you're not so much looking to consume entertainment but rather for usefull info. Thanks!
Thanks for the kind comment! We're definitely geared towards "more info" and less "entertainment" for sure! Thanks for the watch, see you next time!
Float valve on a control bucket, strong!
It's some good thinking and works well, for sure! Thanks for the watch & comment!
I’m literally a first time container gardener this year. This system is amazing!!
Excellent! Container gardening is great, we've been doing it for almost 20 years now! Be sure to keep them well watered in the heat, they dry up quickly. Thanks for checking us out!
Awesome video, Jeff. I'm now thinking about how we can re-orient our garden next year to accomplish something similar. Thanks!
Thank you! Good luck & hope you're successful. We re-thought our container gardening years ago and can't be more thankful we did!
My pooltable service knowledge made this make so much sense. Edit: The elevation to distribution process…leveling.
Excellent! I'm glad my feeble explanation made sense! It's super simple from a physics perspective, but not a concept a lot of people really have much experience in. Pool tables would be one of those fields! Thanks for watching!
This might be my new favorite channel! I live in a very different place…Maui does not have anything frosty…however I have massive snails and slugs that eat everything. I use cooper tape on regular pots to grow food. The method you have looks like so much less watering but still allows the cooper tape to keep unwanted snails/slugs away. I’m excited to try your method and learn how you manage things.
Cool! Glad you liked us! Hawaii & Alaska have a lot in common. :) It is a pretty flexible system. In a warmer climate, we'd suggest white buckets to reduce heat absorption and also a larger reservoir. Light tight is super important to avoid algae. The watering is our favorite part of this system, it's so easy and infrequent. In the peak of summer, we have to fill the reservoir about once a week. Thanks for the kind comment & for the view!
Om goodness! Just what I waa looking for! Thanks for sharing!
Glad you found it useful! Do feel free to come back and ask if you have any questions!
That was really cool! I get a real workout walking around my yard with a 5 gallon bucket watering each container. Just using the downpipe at the beginning would help me a bunch. Thanks.
Cool, glad you found it useful!
Your method of explanation is very good. You must be new on YT to only have 1500 subscribers and I'm sure you'll grow quickly.
Thank you kindly! We are new to YT, started in April. We've been doing the Frosty Garden thing since 2015, though. Appreciate the kind comment!
I have a bit longer of a growing season down on the 45th parallel so most is done in the ground. However, it is still a short season and I've been looking into how to extend some crops. Buckets might just be my answer for select crops and your watering system looks ideal! I'd be using JADAM microbial and fertilization but I think that it could work well. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Worth looking into. I don't see any reason this wouldn't be compatible with JADAM, pretty much any water based nutrition delivery system would work well. We're able to produce warmer climate crops well in an extreme northern environment, so would work for season extension ideas for sure. Just watch your ambient air and soil temps, as both matter for season extension.
Subscribed. Growing off grid in zone 2 in northern Ontario. Thanks for the info. (I also say pass on the lo-fi but it’s still a good video :)
Thanks for the sub! Sounds like we're growing in similar climates! Glad you found us!
Ty🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
You are welcome! Thanks for the watch and comment!
Video bagus banget bos saya suka dengan ini mantap
I've done a 60 unit rain bucket system for several years but decided not to go that route this year. I may try it again next year and fertilize through the reservoir. I still have individual containers and water via drip.
Cool! We find a lot of success over more traditional container gardens using a nutrient reservoirs. Never have to wonder if there's enough nutrition available for the plants in such low soil amounts, just have to watch for salt buildup. And even then, it's not an issue if you keep your PPM low enough.
I use double buckets. DIY grow bucket
Cool! We did build one DIY model, works just the same. For us, it was an issue to store twice as many buckets over the winter!
Olla 4 life
Olla's are pretty cool, for sure! Just a little too expensive to scale up, but great for one off and permanent pots!
Great info! Thanks! Subbed!
I'm interested in SIPs but not interested in watering each individually but making a larger SIP so I can water more plants at once means I have a SIP that's too heavy to move if needed.
So this is a genius solution.
As to the SIP kits themselves couldn't you have made your own for less? Some rocks to support a mesh and a proper length of PVC would be a fraction of the cost.
Glad you liked it, appreciate the sub. We definitely looked into DIY. The problem is (to do it right, anyway) you need two buckets, plus other bits and pieces, and it's actually more expensive (and more time consuming) per unit than this solution. Rocks wouldn't likely give you the air gap and direct soil wicking needed in sub irrigation. In a larger SIP, you could consider using drip irrigation as an option as well, just dripping into the fill tube. We considered this, but since we're so sensitive to water loss (being off grid), the issue with losing water on over-full units while others catch up was not insignificant. This system is virtually zero loss, regardless of how much water the plants use. Appreciate the comment
Thank you another great video. I’ve got my tomatoes and cucumbers on grow bucket with reservoir tank can I use the same fertilizer in tank for both?
Thank you! To your question, probably, but I'm also not sure what fertilizers you're using. Tomatoes do require calcium and magnesium in greater quantities than cucumbers, so a tomato focused fertilizer is usually recommended for them. Meaning, cucumbers would be fine with tomato fertilizers, but tomatoes will need more than a cucumber fert (e.g. all purpose). But, in general, "tomato specific" fertilizers are just fine for other plants, too.
This system seems really good but they are sold out on their website and show as unavailable on Amazon. I hope that they become available once again, I would love to five the growbuckets a go!
Bummer! I have seen over the years that they do fluctuate in their inventory, often running out towards the end of the north American growing season. But, they have consistently restocked over the fall/winter, so do keep an eye on them! They are pretty awesome.
Excellent system. Why do you still have filler tubes in the greenhouse buckets if the water is entering from underneath?
Good question. The insert at the bottom has a hole for the tube, so if the tube weren't there, soil would collapse into the insert where the water is supposed to go. We don't describe it in the video, but the green sticks are water level measurements. We keep them in so we can tell if a bucket has a problem and runs dry. It hasn't happened to us yet, but if there were a clog or something, we'd want to know.
Other self watering bucket guides typically have a weep hole to avoid overfilling from eg rainwater incursion for outdoor grows. Do you do this?
We do have that, yes. There's a hole about 3.5 inches up from the bottom of the bucket for exactly this purpose. We might do a more detailed hardware guide in the future, but these are typical sub irrigated systems.
Need advice on mealybugs eradication
We are fortunate not to have them at our latitude (65 north). Assuming you don't want to move to the subarctic, our go-to recommendation would be regular treatments of neem oil. This is a light grade, relatively food safe insecticide. It works great on aphids and will also work on mealybugs. Spray the entire plant, including stems and both sides of the leaves at regular intervals. It's important to hit infestations early as once they lay eggs, it's really difficult to control the population.
You might also be able to try a tight woven bug netting around your plants. We do this to protect against onion fly and it's very effective. Physical protection doesn't always work well for small bugs like aphids and mealybugs since they can often just go right through the protective fabric. But, it's a helpful defense for some plant predators.
Would love to know what brand of fertilizer you use. I’ve dabbled in the ‘city picker’ brand of container gardening, which is similar to the bucket system you use. I seem to get roadblocked on fertilizing and end up applying a liquid fertilizer to the top of the soil (vs in the reservoir). I need to look into this bucket system, it seems much more flexible.
We're planning on a deep dive video into ferts as that always seem to be a topic growers are interested in learning about. We do a blend of organic and inorganic ferts, depending on the garden. For granular/organic purposes, we are fans of Down To Earth's Biolive and Azomite for micronutrients. On the inorganic side, we love Jack's water soluble series and use pretty much the whole lineup, from All Purpose, Bloom Booster and Tomato Feed. We've gotten into blending these to more precisely hit NPK targets and also to infuse magnesium/calcium, too.
How do you avoid disease in the soil. Do you sterilize it in some way. Do you recycle it? The soil could get expensive if you use commercial potting soil. What do you do about this issue?
We do re-use the soil every year, typically refreshing it with a bit of compost. We don't really do anything special and don't have issues. We're on our 8th season of re-using the soil now. If we do have a diseased plant, we don't combine that soil in our storage, but that's about it. Thanks for watching! We did a full writeup here: frostygarden.com/topics/re-using-soil-in-container-gardens-year-after-year/
Tried similar system but much smaller… my buckets disintegrated and broke apart after 1.5 yrs in the Sun. They were HD buckets. What type of buckets do u use?
Almost all of our buckets are the Leaktite brand. We specifically avoided the big box store brands as we've seen the same thing. The good quality buckets are a bit more expensive, but they do hold up. Some of ours are 6-7 years old now, only one has sprung a leak but no major failures. They can often be found at hydro or growing stores.
what happens if you get an extremely heavy rain that overflows the outdoor buckets
There is a drain hole (actually two, one as a backup) about 3.5 inches up from the bottom of the bucket. Excess water will drain out. Sub irrigation requires what's called an "air gap" to prevent the plants from drowning and these holes do that!
The music in the "background" is very irritating
We are trying different things, being somewhat new to RUclips. (We started this channel in April.) We've preferred folk-esque music in the past, yet we changed it to lo-fi and started getting 1K+ views. So, not sure how to read that. We'll figure it out eventually, but thanks for sticking with us.
@frostygarden907 It wasn't irritating. I enjoyed it. The video was very informative & helpful for me growing in buckets in the Mojave. I'm going to go over your more detailed link & see what kind of soil mix you found works best.
Thanks. I think the issue is the quality of the audio system it's played on. (e.g. speakers vs cell phone) I like having music, as it's the decoration of time, but I might try for even more separation next time.
@@frostygarden907 I can't say that the music was VERY irritating but the volume could be turned down somewhat since it competed with your voice. I would even call the music unnecessary.
We'll probably play with a video using no music and see how it goes. This was only our 20th video and I am NOT an expert in editing! Learning as I go, so appreciate the candid feedback.
Nice video, the "we dont really care" part makes you sound like a bit of arsewhole though.
Well, I'm not. I'm just not into telling people what to do. Plus, I don't read from scripts, so sometimes things don't quite come out as I'd like...and if I don't have an alternate take, well, there's not much I can do about it.
Great video! Your processes are really impressive especially at your scale.
As someone wanting to get started the products, brands, process, maintenance, method info quickly became overwhelming.
Would be amazing to hear your recommendation for noobs to take one container from seed or transplant to harvest.
These are my notes so far. Would love to hear your feedback in comment or video!
Products/Brands ============ premium | cheap | tips
Grobucket $15 | $2 build cheap with 1 gallon jug, 1"x15" pvc, 1" pvc cap
Miracle Grow Potting Mix 1ft³ $15 | $2 bulk petemoss:compost:perlite at ratios 2:2:1
Jack's All Purpose Fertilizer 24oz $16 | $2
Bonnie Parsley x2 (4 plants) $13 | $0 purchase overseeded pots & save seed
5 gallon bucket food grade $5 | $0 free at grocer/baker
Total/container: $64 | $6
Process ====================
Assemble Grobucket, bucket, potting mix
Transplate 4 parsley into bucket (spacing recommended per sfg method)
Top water until established then bottom water
Morning water every 10 days with 1 gallon water & 1/4 tsp Jack's
Prune/harvest every 14 days
I think in some ways you're overcomplicating things, but that's probably my perspective as someone that grows a ton of plants in containers and otherwise. (Meaning, what's easy for me might be harder for someone else.) But, it's literally as simple as "put soil in growing container, put plant in soil, water & fertilize as needed, harvest when desired." I agree it's easy to get bogged down in the specifics. I think you'll find in reality, what's more important is to pay attention to your plants and give them what they need. Things don't work on an "x number of days" cycle, so when the plants need water/fert, give them what's needed. (That's one reason we love Grobuckets, it's super easy to determine that.)
We'll definitely do more videos on our container system, for sure. We determined this year (our first season on YT) that this is a hugely popular topic and one we can contribute a lot to, since we use it heavily. We are hitting our end of season for this year, but we're all ready thinking about topics for next season. Appreciate your input, we'll think about how to present things for "noobs" in your position!
@@frostygarden907 Totally get I'm overcomplicating it and it's not a silver bullet formula and recipe. For noobs who have 0 knowledge both concepts are useful. It's useful to have a baseline formula/recipe and it's useful to know that there is no real recipe and you need to monitor your plants. That way we can get started and learn the nuances through experience. I basically knew nothing about the concepts I mentioned in my list 3 days ago. Didn't know about SIPS. Didn't know about SFG. Didn't know everyone hates commercial potting mix, it's 10 times more expensive and everyone recommends you mix your own (still don't understand why frankly). Didn't know you should basically assume potting mix is inert and fertilize regularly. Etc, etc.
I tried "put soil in growing container, put plant in soil, water & fertilize as needed, harvest when desired." with some house plants in the past that died because my lack of knowledge. Some things I'll do to improve is use SIP containers, use regular fertilizer, harvest more frequently. Look forward to learning more and your future videos!
A lot of people think growing is "easy." How wrong they are! It can be comically difficult at times. We've been "public" gardeners for awhile, mentors even, and our general advice is to "just do it" and learn from your mistakes. You'll make 10,000 of them, guaranteed! We still make mistakes, even after 25+ years of growing! If you haven't, do check out our website (FrostyGarden.com) as we do provide a number of "new gardener" focused articles there. I have a number of videos in planning stages, many which are beginner focused, so there will be more to come. We're extreme cold climate, though, so we only get about 3 months to grow, which is unfortunate for the RUclips community. We're figuring out what to do over the winter, but I'd like to keep producing videos.
FWIW, I don't think commercial potting mix is bad. I use it, specifically ProMix, in case you're wondering. I also do mix my own too, but only for bulk applications to save money. But, it is true that most commercial potting soils aren't nutrition rich. We strongly advocate for fertilization, it's the thing a lot of people are missing!