 Hey everybody welcome back to retro tech and today I've got a special episode for you You know a lot of us around the world are kind of in lockdown right now And maybe in quarantine or something and I just wanted to show you one of my other Hobbies that I definitely have been working on I made a post about it a couple of days ago and that would be gardening That's right. I do some gardening in my suburban neighborhood So I thought maybe it would be beneficial to some of you in case maybe you have some kids or you live in a Neighborhood similar to mine or you just have a small area of land and I could show you some ways to get started So that you can not only have a Little bit of food for yourself and your family or maybe someone that you care about you could give them some food you also have something that would be worth something to trade and Even to sell possibly down the road so all those are very important Especially in the time that we're going through right now So I'm just going to drop myself out of the picture real quick and I'm going to start off by showing you Kind of around my front yard. So this is my yard. Look, I know it looks terrible. It's you know, the mulch is Gone in the front and that all needs to be redone, but I haven't taken care of those beds yet This was literally the first time I gotten out for the season and gotten any kind of yard work done It's first time I've cut my grass First thing you notice this is just the front of my small house And then I've got a tree right here that will block the view from the street pretty much of my Garden that I'm going to eventually show you but just if you look at this tree real quickly It did split in half a couple years ago during a windstorm I walked outside and it literally split right in half while I was standing there looking at it and But the other half is still good. So this is my garden back here in this spot This is you could see I don't have a lot of room between myself and the neighbors But I still have enough room to build this small four by eight lifted bed garden and It's very relaxing, but it also is a good chance, you know to get outdoors and You know get into nature a little bit and So here's what I've got planted for this year first. I've got a couple of different types of strawberries here I know we normally don't do berries, but I'll be honest with you. The store was completely out of stuff I normally do this is also something new for me. I'm trying to grow some egg plants here So we'll see how that goes and then down here. I've got my caged tomatoes and these should do really well there are two things that I've learned to grow really well and those are tomatoes and okra now unfortunately the store only had tomatoes and The eggplant and some herbs and other things. I did not need this year So I'm gonna have to resort to doing some seeds and some other things I've also got some other things coming up, but that's all just in case you know I will be taking some and documenting some of that In case people actually like this video and want to see more now the last thing I've got here are some Baby beets that are better than shrewds. I thought that was pretty funny So I tried some beets, but most likely some of these smaller plants like will either if they they'll either spread really well Or I'll be transplanting them out and I will expand and add some okra and other things Once there's seeds germate now I thought I'd go through here because I did find these old photos and show you the construction and design of this now I built this bed about four years ago and I Went into my backyard here and I cut down with a shovel Just tried to make it because it is on a slope You could tell up here that it's on a slope hill and I wanted to have it not You know, I wanted the bed to kind of look flat Even though it was gonna be kind of deeper looking on some spots. I didn't want to just be floating on top of the Ground and look like it was gonna just slide down the hill pretty much if you know what I mean But what I had to do was I had to cut these it took three of these four by eight, you know treated big 12 inch I'm sorry Not there there those boards They had to be cut and then I did have one two by four that I cut in half And I braced in the center and you'll notice I have a white lining in here that I did Buy and I I put it in there so I could control anything that I put in there And then I refilled it with some of the topsoil You know till about the height of the bed Where those beams are holding it together, but that makes it very sturdy so the you know the sides won't blow out You've got extras cross beams here to help with With that and then I filled it with you know high quality topsoil so doing it like this You have complete control over what goes in there now This was my first year and I'll just show it to you just so you can kind of learn what I did I really overpacked the thing and a lot of these plants that you see in here right now did not grow out now We'll show you something this down here. This is my rosemary plant That I originally grew and you'll see it at the end of this video It's the one bush that's still alive to this day It survives the winter and has stayed in this bed since then But everything else I had the tomatoes down here and I had some other things spread out here This was okra in the middle and I tried some peppers and some other herbs around the outside Which was not a bad idea either if you want to grow herbs around the outside But I just had too much packed in and really limited some of the growth in here So, you know, you can't get too Overpacked because you'll also eventually the gardens will be running out of out of sunlight. So this was week four I'm sorry. You can't see that Text right there, but this is the fourth week and you're already seeing some pretty good growth here these were the okra plants and This would be you know 2019 so this was actually last year my crops so this is by the fourth week of them being in there So there again is the okra. This was some other things. I tried that did not come out like melons Those eventually just did not survive and then of course tomatoes and these tomatoes You know after you have them in the ground and they get sunshine, especially in my area of Tennessee You're gonna get plenty of Growth really quickly even this is just two weeks after what you saw right there so I saw a little friend out here and He of course Was hanging around this garden. So there's that bush you could see the giant rosemary bush, but again This is starting to grow out really well You want to have everything have some good chance to get sunlight? Because the okra will sprout up quickly the tomatoes will sprout up quickly the other thing I had back there was some squash. I wouldn't recommend it. It takes up a lot of space You just want to find you know what you can grow that you could grow a lot of depending on you know How many people you have to feed I have a family of four and they really like things like tomatoes and okra and I can trade and sell tomatoes in okra and I could go into that later about the economics of becoming a legitimate farmer because I've used this bed over the last four years to actually Have a farm business running and according to the USDA, you know, I'm technically a Farmer and I could go into economics of why that's important later on but just for today You know, this is just some of the growth. You'll see on these tomatoes You've already got a nice sized tomato there and then you know 10 weeks after planning you could expect some pretty big explosion here of Plants these okra plants will grow And grow and you'll have some, you know, great little Encounters with nature when you go out even if it's just bugs and the herbs come out and then the tomatoes these were some heirloom tomatoes and You could tell that you're gonna get you know when these are ripe and ready to come off You'll get a half a dozen tomatoes ready to go Now every day you could come out here and Gets a three or four To five pieces of okra and then you know a handful of tomatoes at least every day Which would be the cherry tomatoes But it's really relaxing Again, I feel like it's something that's important. You know, if you're thinking about Something you could do while we're all stuck at home Even if you have just a small backyard or you know a side yard like me This tomatoes really come in and these things, you know yellow tomatoes like this are quite expensive if you go to the store So is the okra So I know we're gonna have troubles getting a lot of good fresh vegetables most likely in This year and it's just an unfortunate truth about what's happening right now so That's kind of the end of what I had to talk about there I really appreciate you guys, you know hanging out with me and just looking at the garden now I do have other projects going on around my small house with this garden and if things continue to go the way I think they're going. I'm just gonna make more and more and more Improvements to the garden like I said I'm gonna do some seeds because there weren't a lot of vegetables available even at the store But there were still plenty of seeds and so I'll show you I could go show you that stuff, too But if you liked the video, you know leave it a thumbs up leave me a comment and Occasionally I'll come back and you know update you on this and show you these things as I feel like if I can just maybe get one person Even to consider or you know finally take the leap of going in and jump it into a garden then you know just like CRTs it'll be a very much a positive part of your life and it does yield rewards and those are the best type of hobbies to have it's something Actually produce to give you something. So anyway, thank you again for watching. I'll see you guys next time with some more real retro tech content I'm sure we'll be jumping right back into a CRT next time, but just again, let me know what you thought of this episode I really appreciate it. See you next time