 We are getting together a garden plan today so we are going to figure out the best location within your yard whether it be containers or raised beds. We are going to talk about how to actually put a garden plan together as far as what goes where. All of the materials that you need to get your garden started and we also have a suggested or starting point garden plan that you can implement if you'd rather have that plug-and-chug type scenario. Yes and you might be wondering who this is? This is Elise from the Urban Harvest and she has been gardening her whole life and she has been teaching people the basics of how to garden for the last 10 years. So I'm elated to have her as part of this teaching series because she is the perfect person to be able to share how you can be the most successful in this garden. So when you first think about where to place your garden I feel like this is something that needs to be focused on right away because things like sunlight or access to water if you don't get that right in the beginning and you place your bed your raised beds for example it's a lot of work to have to go fix that later. So keeping that in mind when you figure out where you want to start your garden is going to be really important. Yeah and you know something that Elise says and something that I've that I've really consistently seen is you want to put your garden where you're going to walk past it every day where you're going to see it every day. Whether that's your sidewalk leading up to your door or just outside of your back door near your kitchen where you have easy access to your herbs you want your garden to be where you are going to naturally be every single day. With sunlight that is going to be that first factor to kind of look at we want it near your space but also making sure it's not too close to the north side of any large structures whether it be your house a garage a tall shade tree we have to keep in mind that as the sun shifts through the seasons and everything like that we want we want our gardens to be a little bit away from the north side of any large structures otherwise it's going to end up with too much shade during the growing season. And the reason why is because the sun is in the in the southern portion of the sky so if your garden is on the north side of your house your building then that's going to be the area that's too shaded. Water is also something that's important we talked about that a little bit in more in depth a little later in this series but the water source is definitely something to consider so if you are in a vacant lot and have no water source like that's something that needs to be considered if you're using your city hose water your garden needs to be close enough to access that city water or your rain barrel or whatever the case is you in theory or ideally want your garden to pretty much be right next to whatever water source you choose to use. Yeah really would not recommend being out of reach from the hose. Yeah that's the key most of you are gonna water with a hose and just being within easy access where you can bring your hose and you can reach every part easily that's the key to success with watering and as far as watering cans watering cans are excellent however if you are traveling back and forth with a lot of water can watering cans you might end up in a glad to clean your garden because it's just the amount of work that it takes. Yeah it's really easy to say oh I'll just you know I'll take my watering can all be and it's gonna fluctuate a little bit depending on your your temperature and your climate but you're looking at bare minimum 10 watering cans every single time you water for a four by eight bed so that's 10 trips back and forth for one bed let's say you have two beds or three beds that's 30 trips to your water source to get your garden watered one day so definitely I think placement and proximity is key. And then you know my recommendation is a hose as much as possible the you also have drip irrigation and sprinklers and what I'll say is for most beginner people if you have two four by eight beds drip irrigation is really nice but I actually think watering by hand is important because it gives you a reason to actually be out connected with your garden every day and the most expensive part of all of it is going to be setting up your irrigation when you could simply use a garden hose so I really do recommend watering with a hose keeping you watering every single day and keeping the cost way down. Now we're going to talk a little bit about what you're going to plant into we're going to talk a little bit about container gardening which includes raised beds and pots and we're going to talk a little bit about planting straight into the ground and the first thing that I want to say is that this is the area where you can end up spending the most money and some people will spend hundreds or dollars and maybe even thousands of dollars on their beds and if money is an object just know you don't need to have raised beds at all nothing fancy is required planting straight into the ground and building up your soil is the way to really like use your money most effectively to grow food and with that you can still build raised beds out of completely free materials so you can get logs just that are being you know cut down in your neighborhood and build your beds out of those you can use bamboo and the nice thing about these naturally made beds is that those will actually break down into soil over time and build up your soil. So a lot of people do think that they have to spend that money but the plants don't really care all they care about is soil that is the key and we'll dive more in depth to that but just keeping that in mind as you're thinking about whether you do the Mounted Rose whether you go in the ground whether you do raised beds or pots or anything along those lines it's the soil that counts now with that being said you're gonna want to do something so once you choose you can do the Mounted Rose you can have wood you can have metal you can upcycle these materials a lot of times from resources around your area you can get old water mains kind of like the ones behind me those were upcycled construction material that would have otherwise been in a landfill as long as it's some sort of containment system for your soil that's what a raised bed or container truly means in the in the gardening world. Yeah and you do want to avoid any pressure treated woods ideally and you know tires growing food and tires those can be leaching off toxins and then also cinder blocks as well so any of the things that you know could be potentially leaching toxins out into your food source are ideal to avoid now if that's genuinely all you have still better to grow your food yeah but if you can avoid those things definitely I would recommend it. If you are looking at wood an alternative to PT or a pressure treated wood that breaks down a lot slower is either cedar or cypress they both have natural pest repellent qualities and so they're going to take much longer to decay than say pine with that being said though they do have a little bit of an added cost so it's definitely gonna be a balance but if you are set on having wood and you don't want those those toxins leaching into the soil then those are the the two best options yeah so if you are looking in working in a little bit of a smaller space perhaps an apartment a balcony or you just aren't quite sure you're ready to go for raised beds yet containers are a great option they are typically really cheap even if you are buying new materials and not finding salvaged it's typically gonna be a cheaper entry point than you know metal or wood for a raised bed and it grows the plants just as just as well the nice thing with containers is that you can move them around so if you aren't sure about your sunlight or how easy it is to access the water you can pick up your pot and carry it around with you if you're thinking about moving soon take it with you or if you're renting and landlords don't let you plant into the ground containers are an option for you when you start looking at containers there are so many different kinds there's terracotta pots there's the cloth fabric pots there's ceramic all of them will grow them they all have a little bit of a nuance to them terracotta if you live in an environment that gets excessive rains it helps to wick moisture out of the soil so if you do know that you're going to be getting a lot of rain during the growing season terracotta could be a good option so that your plants don't get too wet on the other hand if you live in a very arid climate in moisture conservation as a thing the ceramic pots or the plastic pots hold moisture in better so it's not allowing things to escape and evaporate so it'll be kind of based on one on your growing location in your climate but also to a price point terracotta plastic tend to be a little cheaper the fabric pots or the ceramic can be a little bit more expensive and of course use what you can find you know free around you and then lastly just wanted to make a note on aquaponics and hydroponics they absolutely serve a place in in growing an abundance of food but for beginners i definitely would not recommend trying to do any aquaponics or hydroponics for for for growing this food i love aquaponics as a system but definitely takes some real experience and skill to be able to pull off so we have the beds or containers that you've selected and now it's time to put the soil into it that is what we're talking about now is how to fill those containers and when we are talking about raised beds and pots as well in general the general rule of thumb is 12 inches some plants can get away with with six to eight but to keep things simple and to keep the plants happy and well watered 12 inches is what i would suggest as a minimum depth regardless of whether it is a pot or a bed or anything else they can go deeper you can get all sorts of salvaged containers or raised beds you can see some that are even three and four feet deep and while that can be nice if you have any sort of back issues if you can't get up and down off the ground quite as easily anything like that those deeper beds can be nice to have but the soil can get really expensive so potentially adding in mulch as your base and then having that nice nice layer of 12 inches of soil on top allows you to have a deeper bed or use whatever salvaged materials you found without having to break the bank so if you do find yourself with deeper beds adding in that mulch as the base is a good good way to mitigate that cost and that mulch will break down over time into soil so you're saving that money and building your own soil but you have that minimum 12 inches at the top to get your garden started all right so how much soil do you need that's really important to know and i want to help to make that as simple as possible for you so our design again is two four foot by eight foot beds and on the step-by-step guide we have these details exactly but to give you an idea to fill two four by eight beds with a minimum of 12 inches of soil you're looking at 1.2 cubic yards of soil now a pickup truck ranges from one to two cubic yards so you're looking at a small pickup truck worth of soil to to fill two four by eight beds you can buy that soil in bags from the store which you're going to be able to find almost in any city across the united states or you can buy that soil in bulk ideally you can find it in bulk and the reason why is you're going to save a lot of plastic waste you're also going to save money and it is a more sustainable method especially if that soil is being built locally if you're going to be buying it in the bags those bags are about two cubic yards two cubic feet per bag which means you need about 16 of those bags and you can pick those up with any car put them right into your backseat or your trunk and on average those are costing about 11 a bag so you're looking at about 150 dollars to fill two four by eight beds if you're going and buying those bags now i've actually never bought one of those bags before so what would you recommend if they're going to the store and they're buying those bags what do they look for you definitely ideally in my my opinion would look for organic there is some pretty low quality soil otherwise and it can lead to some issues and there's a lot of synthetic chemicals that they'll automatically put into bag soil if it's not organic so my personal preference would be something that is labeled organic when you're starting out just because you know you've got a clean slate and will it say anything like potting soil or garden bed soil so there are differences between the two typically when you're looking at any sort of pots containers you're going to need to make sure that the soil holds enough moisture for the plants the roots don't have as much room to run if you're in a big garden bed those roots can roam and find what they need so typically it's a drainage issue so if you're working in pots look for one that does say pots and if you're looking in a bed they'll have one for that as well okay and if you're going for the ground then you're going to be working in a you you would work in a raised bed or they also have an in-ground bag that you can purchase okay and now if you are looking to source your soil in bulk which is if possible definitely what we recommend how would you go about finding that so you're going to be looking for a local landscape supplier it's a it's a simple google search landscape supplier near me it's not going to be something you've probably seen driving down the main drag they usually have them off the streets a little bit but almost every town is going to have them and you would just call them up say hey i'm going to be doing some raised beds whatever and they will give you an estimate based in yards cubic yards rather than cubic feet you're going to need around 1.2 if you do the four by eight beds and they can have two options you can either go pick it up if you do have a pickup truck like you said one small pickup truck you can get your load if you don't have that and you still want to do the the bulk supply you can have them deliver it so on average a yard of soil is going to be between 50 and 60 dollars if you can pick it up yourself that's almost half the cost of bag soil even if you have to do do a delivery fee this range anywhere from 40 to 50 dollars so you're still looking at a cost savings although not quite as substantial if you do have to have them deliver it but you are not having all that plastic waste so that is a definite bonus and that's we're getting together a few of your neighbors starting a garden at the same time if you get your soil delivered together you can get you can get a better price potentially and drastically reduce the cost of that delivery fee so getting a few of your neighbors to start growing food and getting the soil together and then of course you can do this without buying any soil but what you're going to need is time to build your soil to build up a lot of compost to amend your native soil and you're not going to probably be able to just get these seeds in the mail and plant that right away but if money if you want to do this you know the most sustainable way and without spending money you can build your soil with food waste by dumpster diving with collecting leaves and yard waste through getting mulch drops and you can absolutely build up your soil that way and amend it with worm castings and compost teas and so on that note most of this soil you are buying is likely to not be as nutritious as it needs to be so what would you recommend for amending the new soil so with soil um we purchase it and we think oh okay it's ready to plants and although it may claim that on the bag I would basically encourage you to ignore that and assume that it basically has no nutritional value I always like to think of it as square one whether it's bulk soil or whether it's bag soil regardless of the claims unless you're spending like a lot of money like those really expensive soil bags where it's like you know 20 25 a bag assume that you're going to have to put in fertilizers to your garden to get it up to par for the plants to thrive so that can be very affordable it doesn't have to be a ton of money they have nice general all-purpose like a four four four vegetable garden blend of slow release fertilizer that can cost depending on the brand organic 15 maybe 20 bucks it's not a lot of money but it is something that is worthwhile putting into the soil so that the plants have the nutrition they need to get growing I always like to think of the soil as kind of like the house but you still need the food to feed yourself right you have your shelter you have your house but you still need food and so those are kind of and they need to be disconnected and thought of as provided to your plants in two separate ways so adding in some sort of slow release organic fertilizer anywhere in the 15 to 20 maybe 25 range and that'll be enough to feed your soil get your bed started and very likely also feed your garden the following season nice and then over time you can start building up your own you know amendments through compost through worm castings through uh you know making your own fish emulsion or compost teas and so over time we definitely encourage creating as much as that as possible sustainably right on site so also want to mention a little bit about startup you know you're receiving these seeds from us many of you receive these for free because you don't have a lot of money others of you are you know donating to receive them but I wanted to just touch a little bit of a base on how much it would cost and if you wanted to start and spend the least amount of money possible but still have a budget to spend some you're looking at 200 dollars or maybe under maybe down to 150 including some soil and some amendments and that's if you're making your beds out of you know free materials you know logs and things like that now if you want to go ahead and buy the materials to have beds whether it's the corrugated metal or the wood then you're looking at probably the 400 to 500 dollars so you can see how much it jumps up by wanting to build beds out of you know out of these new materials so again you're looking at 200 dollars or so as kind of a minimum to make sure you've got your soil and your nutrients but remember that's going to be lasting for years and then you're looking at more like four or five hundred dollars if you're buying the materials to build the beds and fill them up with soil and this is if you're getting started from scratch planning out a garden is really fun when you first get started that's the part where you get to choose what plants go where and put it all together the seed pack kind of gives you a great starting point of a mix of different veggies to try easier to grow quick germination and all that good stuff but with that being said even with the starter pack thinking out where it all goes is really going to help you maximize the seeds that you did receive if things don't get spaced properly or over planted or maybe you put the tall plants in front of the short plants and it shades out the other ones you could lose all of those those food plants and kind of waste it so thinking it through ahead of time can really help you to maximize what you're getting from the garden it can be as simple as sitting down with a graph paper a piece of graph paper and putting out your four by eight beds or whatever containers you end up using and just taking you know 15 to 30 minutes and saying hmm well this plant might need 12 inches of space and this one needs two feet let me figure out how I can make this all fit and work and that little bit of extra time will make a dramatic difference in what you're able to harvest from the garden yeah and for some of you that might be intimidating to do that the first time I know it was intimidating the first time I did it and so we have made a plan for you using two four foot by eight foot raised beds that shows what plants to put where so you can follow that exactly and not have to figure anything out at all and that includes whether direct seed or transplant spacing you know where to put them and as far as the taller stuff not shading out the shorter stuff so that is all right on the the step by step guide so that's how to plan out your garden we're excited to have shared this with you and we are excited for the next video which is direct seeding how to plant the seeds now that you've got the soil in your gardens