 Welcome to the Private Property Farming Podcast. My name is Mbali Nwaka and this is another special edition of the Gardening Series with Home Growers. And today we're going to be doing a live demonstration with the Roll-Up Farm and just to show you how you could fill it up using compost or potting soil and start growing your own food at home. Kess, thank you so much for hosting us once again. So today it's all about the Roll-Up Farm. Just explain to us what is the Roll-Up Farm and the concept behind it. Mbali, absolutely my pleasure. It is so fantastic to have you here again. This Roll-Up Farm is something very, very special. Okay. I'll tell you what. So now if you look at it, you'll see it's flat and there's a reason for it. And the way we say Roll-Up Farm is when you get it, it's actually rolled up and it's easy and it's done that for easy transportation. Okay. Get it up as a Roll-Up bag. Right. And hence the name the Roll-Up Farm. So you unroll the farm and you have this bag. But I'm going to go through the motions and the technical components around what makes this bag so special. First it's made from a UB protective material. Okay. Got all the stitched reinforcements absolutely everywhere. It's quite strong. It's very strong, very sturdy. It's going to last a very, very long time and it's going to give you some of the most incredible vegetables and herbs and berry bushes. You'll see some strawberries already have over there. Nice. Those strawberries are going in. I'll teach you a trick in terms of how to get the best of your strawberries. Great. They're all going to work well in the Roll-Up Farm. Now what you'll notice as well, and I'll show you towards the light here, you'll see there's little holes. Yes. Inside the Roll-Up Farm. And the reason for that, and they're all over. Yes. The reason for that is once you've prepared your Roll-Up Farm with all your veg and you put all your soils in, remember you've got your potting mix and you've got your composting, we use the two, we blend it all together and you get a nice concentration of the two inside the bag. So you've got a nice release of nutrients going back into the plants that are able to grow and sustain themselves. Now when you water, the water is slowly released out of this bag into the ground. So the bag holds a lot of moisture, which is what you want. Yes. You don't have to water as often as you would if it were to have been typically in a pot or in soil. Now this is a very, very special bag for people that are living in environments where there's very little space or their garden's right on the other end of the property. Or outside the courtyard or on their patio or on their apartment where they've got a nice patio overlooking a park or whatever it would be. You can actually dress it up quite nasty. And I'll show you earlier when I put a picture of one of our customers who's actually taken one and they've put paving bricks around it and they've made this look so special, which is what you can do. You can be so creative. But I think what we need to do is we need to start this and we're going to prepare the soils. I'm going to introduce Gif. Now Gif's my right-hand man. He helps me with absolutely everything. And when you see the magic at home growers and you see how well everything is growing, we say thank you to Gif. Awesome. Gif is our man of the moment and he is going to help us. And we're going to prepare. We're going to cut open the two bags and we're going to blend in the potting mix and the composting and we're going to strategically put in a variety of different seedlings that we've got. And remember we only use the edible so you can have a wonderful variety. And as we go through it, I'm going to go through each one and explain to you what's been put in and the purpose for it. And when we plant them, we put them in a very particular order because the different seedlings or vegetables grow at a different rate. So we've got to do it very cleverly. So for example, we'll put tomatoes and we'll go through it as well and we like to be able to prop up the tomatoes at some stage either with a bamboo stick or some type of mechanism to hold it up. But then as that is part of the process, we just need to know where we put it. But I'm going to start with the strawberries as well. I'm going to show you where to put the strawberries and the strawberries will always be put on a corner or the sides so the fruits can hang over the edges so the fruit doesn't grow in the soil, doesn't pick up bacteria and the strawberries don't rot. But before we fill up the bags, I know that these bags come in different sizes. So just explain to us what size bag is this one as opposed to the one that we have in front there. Fantastic. So this particular size bag is the one meter one. And the one in the front there which you already put on the soil and just to set it up is the one and a half meter version. Okay. They're technically designed very similar to the same way. They've both got these supporting straps with velcro on them and the reason for that is that you adjust the velcro and the strap onto it just to hold it up and just give it some firm holding. Yes. So the soil is compacted and it's held itself well into position for easy and healthy growth. Fantastic. They're both identical. And the one thing which worked out very well which you'll see on that one on this one here, if you hold this like that and you see if you imagine soil inside here you've got different zones. So you can already position where you're going to plant. So you've already got predetermined zones to put in your veg and your herbs and your berry bushes. And you can put the plants in different groups as it is. Okay. Great. Special, special, special stuff. And one of the others that we've got growing which is our first one that we set up a while ago we've got beautiful, beautiful sweet potatoes growing. And the sweet potatoes grow and they thrive in here. I've got one going at home which has got magnificent cucumbers for me and that's what I want to see. And this is where the magic is because if you're able to grow those kind of vegetables in a small environment you're going to get maximum results. Right. So should we get gifting? Let's get gift. Gift please join us and let's go through the process in setting up this magnificent roll-up form. Right. So we have gift here. What's the first step Cass in getting this set up now? Okay. So let's take it one step back and we unpack the roll-up form from its packaging. Okay. And we now start the process by removing the velcro strips. Okay. And the reason for that is that we're going to now start filling it with a beautiful mix of potting mix and composting. Which is really about getting this all prepared well into getting the seedlings into the mix. And we can get a beautiful display of magnificent herbs and vegetables growing in our roll-up form. Awesome. Quite excited. So I see gift is compost here now. Okay. So what Gifts is going to be doing is putting the compost in and you'll see there's bigger pieces, chunkier pieces in the soil load itself. And so we're going to take a mix of composting and you can feel the texture. It's a lot chunkier than that of a potting mix. Okay. And there's a couple of reasons as to why we do this. And it's very much for, let's just get that in. So what's the difference between compost mix and potting soil? Okay. So you'll feel the texture. Yeah. The texture of the potting mix which has just got in now. It's a lot finer. There's more soil inside it in terms of its composition. Your composting is made from chunkier pieces so a lot of wood chips, bigger pieces that would come from the rehabilitation of garden refuse and the process is about getting it into organic state where it starts to decompose and it's bigger chunkier pieces which allows you to have decent form. So if I squeeze that in a hole that you'll see you've got a decent blend of nice hard strong pieces of bark and other wood fillings. And you can see this one now, you can see the rich color. It's a darker, darker color to that of your potting mix. Potting mix is almost got like a brownish color to it and the composting is more correct. And it's full of nutrients. Right. So give just put about three bags. So this first compost then potting mix and then compost. Correct. So when a person buys this roll up form three bags go into this specific size. So what we typically do is only one meter, one. We normally put two and two. Two bags compost, two bags potting mix. Right. Right now we've got three. You can see there's still a bit of capacity. Okay. So what we're going to do is going to put the next one in and then we're going to put the straps up. So that's the purpose. Now if you see the straps, there's a reason for it. So. And is there a strategy behind compost potting mix or can you just mix it all? As long as you mix it in you give it a fair representation in terms of what's in the load. And again you can see the difference in the color. It's not as dark as that of the compost. So it's a very, very, very different color and texture itself. And I've covered that strap which we'll take out. There we go. So once we've got this in place we're then going to just knock it together. We're going to push it down. Compact it quite well and hold into the roll-up form itself. Okay. So then it becomes easier for us just to their position. Those seedling plugs into this. And then what we're going to do is to have a bit of the light in our garden. You can see it's already holding the form together. Yes. You'll be in a lander putting the strawberries in the corners. And the trick here and it's a really special way of growing and planting the strawberries is to put your strawberries on pot where the fruit hangs over. Because you don't want the fruit to grow in the soil. Because it's bacteria. And you don't want bacteria to grow onto the fruit itself. Right. And you'll see these are flowering as well. Okay. These are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful strawberries. And you can see we had a couple of red wigs here because they're beautiful insects as well already. So you don't plant the strawberries with the bags. The bags don't decompose. No, not at all. So you must remove those. Okay. And put them directly in. So we're going to start that process now. Okay. So we'll start digging into the corners there. So let's get this done. So we'll open these up a bit. Okay, so that's a nice size hole that you've dug. Okay. That will go in there and then we just fill up the soil. And then we can get the rest done. And then what we'll do is we'll use a spray bottle afterwards just to give the mix a nice soaking and a bit of hydration so that we have a decent offering of water onto these seedlings and these beautiful, beautiful strawberries. And in a couple of weeks time, you won't believe the difference in how this is going to look. It's going to look totally, totally spectacular. And we have very, very different offerings to that as what you're seeing right now. I mean, the last time you and I met and you looked at that roller form that we had set up, it was very, very sparse in terms of its variety of what was growing. Now, if you have a look at it, there's almost no soil to be seen. Everything's green. It's just an abundance of green growth. So that is what is special about it. And the one thing which I don't like about these plastic bags, and you'll see for example, so it holds a lot of water and water doesn't drip through effectively. Although there are some holes there, you can see how this is clayed out. And what happens is if you don't get decent drainage, you'll end up getting aggressive root rot. Now with the roller form, you don't have that because you've got strategic holes all at the bottom and the water slowly seeps out. So you don't have that. And then if you see this, this is very clayy compared to this. So you're not going to get the problems of water logging in the root system, which is going to cause root rot. So this is the best way to do it, the healthiest way to do it and your seedlings and your strawberries are going to have an absolute fantastic time in terms of their growth. So we'll pop that forward. You'll see we've hung all the strawberries forward. So they're all out on the front of the roll-up pot. And they're different blocks as well. Yes, absolutely. All in their different little blocks. So now what we're going to do is a gift. You're going to take out some of those plugs there for us and we are going to now position different vegetables in different parts of this roll-up form. So the purpose of the strawberries, they have to be at the edge so that the strawberries could hang, right? So there are a couple of techniques around why we do it that way. One is that it's certainly, that's beautiful, that's time. What happens is your vegetables, that are your strawberries that grow, are easily accessible to be able to harvest. Think about it, if you have them in the middle as well, if it wasn't an issue with the strawberries growing into the soil and picking up bacteria, once you've got a decent canopy of tomatoes growing and you've got thyme and you've got parsley and you've got beetroots and you've got tomatoes, to try and get you those strawberries is impossible. Yes. So and they're not going to flourish. But putting them out the way you've done now, you're going to get the best strawberries that you'll ever believe. Looking forward to it. So before gift starts planting, maybe just tell us what we're planting. So this is a... That's thyme, that's common thyme. Thyme seedling and this is it. Yeah, well that's a beautiful tomato. That particular tomato variety is called the Money Maker. Beautiful, beautiful plum red tomatoes. Absolutely special. And these are your? Trives, those are garlic trives, beautiful garlic trives and we've got some beautiful lettuces and those are there, those are basil, that's a purple basil. Oh wow. Beautiful variety. And the nice thing about the basil, you've got your different red oak and green oak and then you've got your parsley and then you've got your beetroots, that's your parsley. Yeah. And then also once they start and they find their form, the scents that you're going to get, the color that you're going to get, they're going to be bursting with absolute flavor and vigor. When you see these things growing, it is going to transform whatever garden area you never had before, whether it's on your patio, whether it's outside your kitchen, whatever you decide, this is going to be revolutionary. Right. It's going to be a very, very special place. So what's our strategy in planting? We've got the strawberries at the corners, different crops and different herbs. So do we put it per group in one block? So no. So you can do that in certain elements, like if you're going to do carrots for example, highly recommended you do that. But what we're going to try and do here, we're going to take the tomatoes and we're going to put them towards the ends over here. So we're going to try and get them towards the ends of the bag. And the reason being is that if you're going to need support for them, because remember tomatoes can grow incredibly hard, you've got to put something into support them. So you might take some bamboo sticks, put those in, which is going to support that beautiful, beautiful bush. And there's a lot of tricks. There's a lot of magnificent tricks to get the finest tomatoes growing out of a tomato bush, which I'll explain to you another time. You cannot believe what you can do. It's literally like making magic on your air. Whether it's in your garden, whether it's in a roll-up form, we're no matter where it is. Yeah. I'll teach you a trick. So let's get planting. Let's get those growing. So we're going to put those out. So it's a very simple thing. We're going to just dig a little hole there. Okay. We're going to pop these in. Okay, we're going to just give them a bit of space to grow, because they're all going to grow incredibly well. And just remember what you want to do is you want to achieve by way of giving them the capacity to have support using whether it's going to be bamboo sticks or some metal frame or whatever you create. Okay. So we've got that. And then these ones could grow? So those can go anywhere. I mean, those are going to make a difference. These are going to be nice just to give some nice color, in terms of not color, but the greenage, in terms of little strands coming through of beautiful, beautiful, beautiful chives. So for a person who's buying this roll-up form and they have no idea where to plant and how to plant, would home grow as a system just to show them how to start separating the different plants based on the different groups so that it could grow optimally in this form? Absolutely. Okay. We have a seven-day support line on WhatsApp as well. So, you know, those that make contact with us, we walk them through the process. Okay. They get all the support seven days a week on WhatsApp or telephonically. Doesn't make a difference. We're there to support and help those that want to start growing and having a vibrant, vibrant roll-up form on their property. Awesome. So we can now, as you see, we really dress this up as a lot of green. There's spectacular green happening. And also the one thing which I must stress as well, you know, when you plant any herb or vegetable for that matter, there's no guarantee that every single one of them are going to take. That is great. You all get a degree of failure, so don't be alarmed. You know, just understand that the plant has gone through a significant amount of shock and as a result of that, they do struggle and do suffer. Now, what makes it very, very interesting when you start using organic soils, your probability of having natural worms or worms inside the soil to keep the soil balanced in terms of nutrients, you've got a good chance of there already being worms in these bags, red wigglers, and there's obviously other varieties as well. And they will basically munch away on the composting pieces and convert that into a nutritious food source for the plants. And these plants are going to thrive. You come back in a couple of weeks' time and you take a snapshot view now and we see exactly what we have today versus what we can have in a few weeks' time that's going to be magnificent. Great. I feel like we have no more space left. No, we don't. We've actually over munched, which is fine. So I think, gift, you can take those babies away and we'll use them somewhere else. So after planting, this looks fantastic, very colorful and quite spacious. And then, I suppose, then we bring the water. So now we've got to say, what gains and what you do is we have these heads that we put onto an old cola bottle and you pump it up and create pressure inside the bottle. The nozzle allows you to adjust so you can get your misting. Oh wow. And then you just literally spray around and you hydrate all your vegetables. And what's important about using a spray head or a spray bottle with a misting unit on it is that it doesn't damage the finer vegetables that you planted. Yes. You take a host pup and a lot of people don't realize they take his host pup and they're in full blast and they're blasting it and they've got mud shooting everywhere and you've got damage to your poor little seedlings that you've just planted. Doing it this way, you're causing absolutely no damage whatsoever and that is the secret and the secret to success when it comes to growing beautiful vegetables, herbs, berry bushes, strawberries, whatever you decide you have that option in terms of your roller form. And although we're talking roller forms today we take the same methodology we apply it to anything that we do around the house. This is just a mechanism to get you a different product or produce output. Right. So my last question for the show and specifically for this roller form is then once you've put in the water you know where do we put this balcony outside and do you just you know water every once a week and just wait for the crops to grow? That's right. So the one thing which we recommend people to do is obviously use the finger test just take your fingers just plug part into the soil and you'll feel the depth and where the moisture is. If it's dry water don't ever let it dry out. As I said before the magic around this bag is that it controls the amount of water that it lets at so you're not losing a fortune of water. So that's a great water management system water harvesting process involved to keep this this whole system because it's a system like to refer to it as a system to keep the system hydrated and healthy and you'll see in a couple of weeks time you will not believe the difference is what you have here. This is going to be mind-blowing and we're going to take photographs and we're going to look back and we're going to say now I can't believe this is what we were doing X weeks ago. Yeah. This is really special stuff. Looking forward to it Kass thank you so much for hosting us once again today and explaining the concept around the roll-up farm. So I suppose yeah let's continue to take pictures of the growth and let's see you know what's what beautiful vegetable garden we could uncover from this. Fantastic, I look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for watching the gardening series today and we just did a demonstration of the roll-up farm and we're going to be taking pictures and sharing them with you just to see the progress of these beautiful vegetables and herbs throughout the coming weeks. So come on through to home growers get your own roll-up farm buy your own seedlings ride shared home growers and they have a 24-hour support line through WhatsApp just to assist you in how to plant where to plant the plants and the different crops that you could buy and grow in your own roll-up farm. Please do share some videos and photos of your own farm using the roll-up farm and remember to tag us. That's it from me, Balimorko and I'll see you on Thursday at 8 p.m.