DIY Self Watering Raised Beds/Green Thumb Nursery

if you are growing in raised beds but you're trying to figure out how you are going to irrigate those raised beds then you are going to want to check this out today what if you could come up with an irrigation solution that you would hardly ever have to water well today i am at green thumb nursery in my hometown of russellville arkansas and we're going to show you a very interesting way of setting your raised beds up where you don't have to do a lot of watering and maybe except for the peak times of the year maybe no watering at all i know it's crazy but it can be done and we are going to show it to you now so this is tammy jansen she is the owner of the green thumb nursery she is a retired school teacher and she has opened this nursery fairly recently and i have to admit this is amazing what i love about this nursery is that you have made room for edible plants vegetables herbs you have signs all over here about pollinators and natural things and that just makes this nursery so unique but what i love the most is i saw your raised beds when i came here for the first time and then i started hearing the buzz about the unique way that you water them so this unique raised bed vegetable watering is something you've done at your own home yes so before we get into the nuts and bolts because we're actually going to be filling one today we're going to tell everybody and show everybody how that works what results have you seen in your own garden so i have 25 of these raised beds at home and over the last six or seven years we started out with a few it works so well so we've added on and now we're up to 25 and i if they're just so much more lush because they get that consistent watering and then i don't have to remember to water them and i've just noticed that they're just a lot healthier plants and they produce a lot more uh produce because of that um non-stop watering i'm so glad that i caught you at a good time because you're not finished you're you've got several of them already done and already growing lush yes but you've got a couple that you're still filling yeah we um one of the things i wanted to do when i did the nursery was to teach organic gardening classes so we are building some here at the nursery and um we have two more left and so we saved those so that we could show you the process so let's go on out there and what we're gonna do is you're gonna actually show us what this system is and we're going to watch you put it together okay and then at the end we'll just be able to see what it looks like when it's all filled yes how's that sound sounds good all right tell me about these raised beds what you are doing before we even start the irrigation process okay so first we built um four by eight beds and we've leveled them because we're on incline and made sure that they were flat so that all the material on the inside will be the same okay so tell us about the plastic and why you line the bed with plastic so we lined the bed with plastic because we're going to create a wet reservoir that will hold rain water or water to feed the plants we used a six or eight mil plastic doesn't matter what color it comes in different colors but it just needs to be the stronger um i have seen where people have used pool liners it's really about just something strong that's going to not tear up over over time so we just stapled it to the top it also creates a barrier between treated wood a lot some treated woods food safe but just to be safe if you it keeps on the median of the dirt separate from the the chemicals in the treated too so okay so your first step if i'm understanding you right is to fill the bottom with rocks explain why and maybe because a lot of us have been told that we don't ever want to have rocks at the bottom of a container pot or something like that but this is completely different explain a little bit about the rocks and also how deep the rocks need to go so we use river rock it's a rounded rock that way it doesn't tear the plastic if you used other kind of gravel that has jagged edges it'll puncture a hole and it won't hold the water so river rock works better it's to create void between the space for the water to you know just like a river you know so it's creating that reservoir but the rock is just um in there it also holds the dirt up so when you add the dirt it doesn't sink down on the water so it creates a harder surface but then the water gets in between those rocks to make that reservoir how deep are you going to be filling with the rock um about 12 inches uh if you go much less than that you're just gonna have to um water more often you know fill the bed up or whatever so they recommend 12 inches of that and then you'll have 12 inches of dirt as well so so basically the 12 inches of rock on the bottom is this reservoir where the water is going to be going in between the the individual rock pieces right and then from there you're going to show us later that water actually gets to the soil and gets to the plants right so the it's it's just going to hold it like a swimming pool or a bathtub so you'll have all that water but in the water will be around the rock and then once again the rock will just hold the you know it's to hold that dirt so it doesn't sag down into the water [Music] so you mentioned the overflow explain that to me and that's i guess the next step in the process right yes so we put in an overflow pipe so in case you forget to take the water hose out to fill it or if it's rained many many inches for days and days and days and does it quit like last week like last week the water won't come all the way up because it does have plastic so it's going to hold it all the way to the top so then it would increase chances of root rot or just different diseases and stuff where just water just sitting so we put an overflow at the top of where the reservoir is so that when it gets to that level the water starts to to seep out onto the ground and then so it never lets you go past that point and it's it's 12 inches that's just what you that's the amount that they recommend to have in these beds for this process and so that's where we put the overflow pipe and so we drill a hole we use pvc pipe it doesn't have to go all the way across just in about i mean a third or half of the way so that we've already drilled the hole all we have to do is just poke a hole in the plastic but we make a very tiny hole because we want it to tight as possible around this so it doesn't seep out around the plastic i'll only find it so we just make a very tiny tear and then okay i'm going to let you it's so tight you have to hammer it in and that just keeps it from seeping out around the edges and so now it sits just right on top of the rock so when it rains the water collects or if you fill it with a water hose um as soon as it gets to this point it just starts draining out onto the ground okay so a big part of this wicking bed is this pipe right here and you can put it in like we're doing now or you can add it before you add the rock together so explain all this to me so this is a corrugated um three or four inch sewer pipe so it's got holes in it the only purpose to this is if you get into the summer it has not rained and your plants need to be watered you want to fill that reservoir at the bottom you just put your water hose down this and the water shoots out and fills up the bottom bed so this is just the way to deliver water to it if you're not collecting rain water but that way you still get water coming from below to water so this is strictly only if you have to fill the bed yourself manually so because you are just pouring water into that that's why you don't have to have it the length of the bed right it's eventually gonna it's gonna just like a bathtub where you have the faucet coming down it's just gonna automatically push the water all the way down and fill up so you don't have to we've ran it halfway sometimes but we found that it works just as well and it's more cost effective if you don't use a long piece of pipe so we just do it long enough to where we can actually cover it um so i don't know two foot long probably well maybe a little bit longer 28 inches or so just long enough so that it'll stay under the rock and then the next step we just put landscape fabric on it to separate the dirt from the rock because it'll clog the pipes it'll also clog those voided spaces between and you just get mud and so it won't it'll just soak it all up and so if you don't put that barrier between it you don't really ever just have standing water in there we're feeding it under the board so it's just straight on top of the rock instead of up and over and we actually cover you have to make sure you cover that pvc pipe because if not the mud will get up inside that pvc pipe um colt is making a slit in it just so it'll kind of go around that pipe you just cut it down a little ways so you can kind of tuck it around and he's putting rocks um along the edges like this and that's really just to kind of hold the in place so that it doesn't move around when you start dumping dirt on it does it matter what kind of landscape fabric you use no not really um you want something that the water can seep through so you don't want it so thick that it stops anything you know like the plastic you use so that nothing grows you don't want that but you don't want the thinnest stuff either because it's going to deteriorate over time have you ever done like i'm thinking of the landscape fabric i have at home and it would not span four feet it's probably like a three foot have you ever done double like smaller or do you try to get the four foot to fit yeah we just we um always make every one of our beds are three foot or four foot and so and i choose the width of the bed based on what i'm gonna plant in it so if i'm growing stuff up i only use three foot beds because it doesn't take up too much space um but even on a three foot bed i just use four foot and i just kind of fold it over all right so now there's a fun part right now's the dirt yes okay so tell me what kind of soil you're filling this with so it's composted dirt it comes from a friend of ours that has a cattle farm and he takes the dirt off of the fields which he doesn't spray anything on it and uh he turns it with the unused hay during the winter and so after about the second year um it's ready to use and so it's got cow manure and dirt and you know all those deca um the stuff that decomposes over time in there mostly the bales of hay all right so it's all filled with this amazing compost explain a little bit more in detail how this works like we saw how you did it but how does the water actually get up to the soil so these beds have a different of several different names they call them wicking beds they call them self-watering beds capillary beds but basically you have a reservoir of water and the water leeches up that just means that it just soaks up and so at any point you can come and dig down that far and the water the dirt is is damp and so that water just the dirt soaks it up through there and um to where the roots are it'll come up about 12 inches but like an example is when you put a paper towel into a cup with water you can see that water move up the paper towel it just seeps up to the top that's exactly how the dirt works in this it just takes that water like a straw and just sucks it up and so it brings it up to where the root systems are in the plant and it always waters from the bottom wow i mean i can like i said i can imagine how much water that saves in general and as you mentioned you've seen it with your eyes how much more lush the plants are like it would be interesting to compare my garden and yours in august yeah because i'm sure it will be a big difference well i mean it looks like i water every day and i never water and the only time i ever have a water hose in my garden is in the heat of the summer if it has not rained and i put it in the pipe to fill the reservoir because uh 12 inches of water will last about a week but as your plants get bigger the root systems get bigger they drink more water so sometimes it's you know a little less but the way i tell if i need to fill it is i just dig down if i get down about two inches and it's still dry i know it needs water but i try to get into the routine in the heat of the summer to just put the water hose in there once a week whether on whether it needs it or not because that overflow pipe will let me know how much water it needs and so if it comes out immediately it's full but if it goes for a while then it needed water but uh they just get that constant um watering of themselves as they need it versus watering on real heavy one day and then being busy and forgetting to water it the next and that's what puts stress on the plants and so you have better foliage you have better harvest produce the plants are just overall healthier because of that consistent watering from the bottom it also keeps from having blights because the rain water splash you know i mean you're just having the water splashing up on your plant with the dirt so you don't get those issues as much so it's just water bottom up and i can imagine too because you're not having to water with city water as often you don't have the chlorinated water that i i think can can affect the microbial life in the soil when you have a lot of that chlorinated water and that could be part of my problem in the middle of the summer not that they're not watered enough but they're watered with chlorine water right and i do it as least amount as i can but you know how in the summer it just doesn't rain very often so you don't really have a choice unless you have a well you know that would be a good we just don't have a well so we just use the but most of the time i never haven't watered and you can see the the garden behind us and of course it has rained a lot but it will look like that in july it because it doesn't really know that there's a drought you know so and it doesn't know that humans forget to water yeah they just drink as they need it you know so well and you do have the option of versatility too because as we have over here you do trellis a lot of vegetables in here um we haven't constructed the trellises yet but we do have the materials to do it um so i grow everything i can i grow up just because it's easier you don't have to bend over and it takes up much less space we use heavy duty wire or just any of the really stiff wire there's different kinds horse wire but you just got to get big enough squares so your produce doesn't get stuck in the middle so like we have this piece right here and um i think these were what's the inches they're four by four squares four by four squares you can get them bigger or you can get them smaller um smaller the produce is going to get stuck in the middle we just attach two by fours on the ends and then we use the little staples that you have to hammer in and like fencing staples and it is really stiff and it holds up the weight of the plants and it holds up storms you know it doesn't blow it and so we've had ours for years and we haven't had to replace it or anything because it's that really heavy corrugated i mean just really heavy duty metal so many options and the biggest thing is you don't have to spend as much time watering you can spend more of your time actually in the garden doing what you love i think that's what the reason why we built so many of these we started off which is two then we went to four and then we went to 25 and then here we have 14 or 15. but we started as we got older realized that time was money and so we had to pay a little bit extra but now i don't have to do the back breaking word as much and i can actually enjoy when i come out here so and it doesn't take as much time so well tammy this has been so much fun i've learned a lot like i said i'm going to be hitting my husband up to hopefully doing this on our next raised bed and i think this gives people really a great option especially there are so many parts of the country that they are experiencing persistent drought and i just think this will be a great solution for so many people so thank you so much for bringing us along for the ride well the nice part is you can have it anywhere in town in the country it doesn't really matter you can put these anywhere and so it makes gardening easier you know and for those of you guys in arkansas or if you're traveling through arkansas because it's a great place to visit be sure to check out green thumb nursery here in russellville arkansas and like and subscribe to this channel for more how-to videos like this one [Music] you

Channel: Beginner's Garden - Journey with Jill

Views: 156,384

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Id: dlxsapM_1ec

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022