- Good day, I'm Mark
from Self Sufficient Me, and in this video, I'm gonna show you how I assess and prepare three
different raised garden beds, all look the same, but all have very different
stages of development. But I'm also sewing and
planting different crops. This video will be good
for a range of people from beginner food gardeners
right through to the advanced. So stick with me and let's get into it. (birds chirping)
(bright music) Righty-ho, let's start with this one here. You can see it's pretty bare. There's not a lot of
growth at all in this bed, and that's because I've recently weeded it and I've let this bed rest for quite a while too, several months. Plus I've even buried things in here to give it a little bit
of extra fertilizer boost. One of those things was a snake, and I buried it right there, about a meter or so. I didn't dispatch it, I just found it. Sometimes snakes get attacked here. It was probably a kookaburra
that had a go at it and then couldn't eat it. So rather than let the
thing stink up in the bush, I decided to bury it into the garden bed because it'll turn into
great snake fertilizer. So speaking of fertilizer, my assessment is because
the bed's being rested and because I've buried things in here that will bump the
fertilizer up in the bed, not just in those spots. You gotta remember, when you bury organic matter into a bed, it does get moved around. Worms eat it and microbes, and soil moves, so it can spread throughout your bed. And the other part of my assessment is what am I gonna plant in here? Because depending on the plant, I might need to have to do
other things to this bed or add additional nutrients to it. In this case, I wanna
plant another crop of corn. I've got this Jolly Roger here, you can see still standing. I've been using it for two reasons. The first one is as a living trellis. Well it's dead now, but it was growing some asparagus pea. And I've left those stalks there so that the asparagus pea
could continue growing and we could continue
harvesting and eating it. And the second reason was I wanted some of this corn to be naturally dried on the plant so that we could mill it later to make corn flour or corn meal. Unfortunately, because of the weather, it hasn't gone so great, but I'm still gonna
salvage a fairly good crop. Because it's a heritage variety, that means it's true to type and you can grow it over and over, I'm just gonna simply pluck some off, spread the seed around, and then we'll have a new crop hopefully before our
winter starts to set in. And we'll be harvesting fresh corn. So let's do that. I'm just going to even it out, rake it over, just to make sure that it is even, not necessarily to till the soil because there are some
lumps in here from the rain and from the scrub turkeys that have been jumping
up and scratching around. They've also been eating
some of my corn, by the way. Now I'm gonna put some mulch, probably 1/2 a bail of mulch, spread it around liberally
and nice and thick. That'll keep the weeds down. And as well, it'll just keep the moisture in and add value to the
bed as it breaks down. I probably should be wearing a mask. I'm using this because of that fine dust, but I can't be bothered. I'll just hold my breath. Well, I'm breathing through my nose. That doesn't work. Well, my nose is a bit of a filter. Okay, that's covered in mulch
a couple of inches high, and now we're gonna part
the mulch like Moses. We're gonna make a race
course around the outside and a couple in about 30 centimeters apart, maybe just under a foot apart, and so that will have
enough room and even spaces for the corn to grow. About, say, six to eight inches in, and I'm just gonna go
around and part the mulch. I love how this is so Biblical. Pushing it back against the side and just exposing the soil underneath. And now I'm gonna make a little trench so we can sew those seeds in. I call this reverse sharking. Just get the hand in
and just dig it along, making that little trench right up the side and
as far as I can reach, and then I'll go around the other side. This all looks really good. Feels good too. I love this reverse sharking. Looking good. And in the middle. Now let's get our seed. And conveniently, I have
some right here, look. Nice cob. Look at all that. That's plenty, plenty of seed there. So all I'm gonna do is
gonna screw this around and release the seed. I'll just drop it here and then I'll spread that seed
all nice and evenly around. There we go. Yes, lovely. I'm not gonna use it all. In fact, some of this
I'll just keep and dry or maybe keep the seeds for next season. Righty-ho, that should be enough for now. Let's see how we go. So I'm just gonna spread the
seed nice and evenly as I go. It's not gonna be perfection. Just slide just in that
little trench that I made. And then I can thin them out later. Now I'm gonna cover about an inch or so with some premium potting mix. This is a premium brand, but you could use your own compost, about an inch high. It's nice and light. It'll allow that stalk to come punching through pretty easily. Plus it gives just a little bit of an extra bit of nutrients as well. Now all I'm gonna do is pat down, just firming it down
so it's nice and happy, all tucked in, those little corns. You can use the back of
the hand or the front. Now moving on to bed number two. You can see it's full of weeds, but what I want you to
take particular note of is that these weeds are nice and plump. They're juicy, they're young, and the seeds haven't formed yet. I can dig all this beautiful greenery as a green manure back into this bed, add heaps of nutrients to it without jeopardizing
or compromising the bed and a million new weeds come up. All right, I've got my trusty
army and trenching tool here. The ET, as we call it. Let's just start smashing. Gosh, this is fun. Just think of someone you don't like or maybe something you don't like. All right, now that we've
got them knocked down, what we wanna do is dig them in, mash it up, chop them up as much as possible. I do have a better method, and that's to run it through the mulcher and spit them back into the bed. But say you don't have a big
mulcher or any mulcher at all, well then this is the old
method I used to always use. Just sheer manpower. Just chopping and pushing. That's the technique. Chop, push, burry. Doesn't have to be too deep. I'm gonna sprinkle a
little bit of this around. This is called Organic Xtra. Now, it's not sponsored or
no affiliation or anything. You won't find it at the big stores, but you will find it online and at smaller nurseries
around Queensland. This is a local company made here in Queensland, all organic. I'm just gonna give it a
little bit of a sprinkle just to get those seedlings
off to a good start. It's a pelletized form, easy to sprinkle around, and I'm just gonna do this. Maybe five handfuls max in this size bed. Five, not much at all. But now we add the mulch. That's it, nice and thick. Perfect. Now, this might look a little bit lumpy, that's okay, the mulch will settle down. What I'm gonna do in this bed is I'm going to sew some spring onions, four different types of them. I want a succession grow. What that means is I wanna grow just some to start off with, get them started to a certain height, perhaps four weeks head start, and then start some more of
the same crop in the same bed as I go along so that you've got crops
at different stages. And that way, you don't have one big
glut of produce at once. An extended harvest all
the way through the season. Since there's four, I'm gonna make four rows
pretty close together along this side first. Just again, do the Moses
thing, part the mulch. Now, you might find that
you have extra mulch, so don't be afraid if
it's bulking up too much to move some of that mulch over there and redistribute it as you
go and as it breaks down because you're not gonna be
using that side of the bed for a while yet. Another one here, about 20 centimeters apart. My four rows are made. Now, it's different to this bed over here where I just dug in and
then sewed into the soil. I don't wanna sew on top of this greenery. It might affect the seed growth. So to mitigate that problem, I'm just gonna put down
some potting mix as a base and sew into that or on top of that, and then I can cover with potting mix. That way, at least the seeds
have a good stable base to start and grow through. Punch it down a bit. Do the old backhander. And now let's sew the seed. I'm gonna sew some of that Red
Toga in the first one here. Tip it out on my hand, and then I just want to pinch it and just sprinkle that seed as I go along. That's the first one done. Put that to the side and
let's start with the next one. Two more to go. Let's go with the Japanese bunching. And the last one is the long white. And then these are only small seeds, so just cover lightly with
some more seed raising or good potting mix. Pat it down, give it a backhander. And there we go. There's all four. We'll give this a watering later on once we finish the last bed. But essentially that's it there. Should be enough room for
at least a second crop and probably a third if I just squeeze them in a bit. The last bed here is full
mainly of mustard plants. I over-sewed, or just threw in a whole
heap of old mustard seed. It was the wrong time of year, but I knew I could harvest it
and use it when it was young in salads and that type of thing. But now that it's got to a medium height, it's suffered a bit in
the summer heat and rain and it's gone quite hard and bitter. What I'm gonna do is I'm
just gonna pull all this out, harvest all these weeds as well. Tidy the bed up. And then I'm gonna plant some seedlings that I got from the nursery. And then it's just a matter
of pulling out all this stuff, shaking it, trying to get as much of the
root soil as possible off. But it's inevitable, you're gonna lose some
when you pour it out. Oh boy, that's pungent, hokey crikey. If the weeds haven't gone to seed, you can throw them in
the compost if you like. I'm likely going to just
throw them on the ground and when it fines up, mow over them and mulch
them into the grass. But sometimes, I'll throw
them into the compost. Actually, I might throw
the weeds right down here so that it protects my boots from all the mud that I'm generating. This last several weeks
has been shocking here, so much rain and flooding. Certainly easier than digging it in. Just pulling it out. Now I'm not gonna till as such, I'm just gonna even the
bed out a little bit just to make sure that I also
rake out any small seedlings like weed seedlings
and that type of thing, and just even her all out here. Okay, that'll do. And now I'm gonna give
it some extra fertilizer because I've been pulling
things out of this bed. And my assessment is that it
will need a little bit extra because things have been
growing in it for a start, sucking out nutrients, and I've pulled stuff out of the bed which is taking away
extra nutrients as well, also extra soil and minerals. So let me put some of that back in. So again, I'm gonna use
Queensland Organics brand because it's a local brand. And you can't get this
stuff around the world, you can only get this in Australia. Have a look around and see if there are some
local fertilizer companies, and maybe give them a try instead of some of the bigger
brands and see how you go. You might be pleasantly surprised. But anyway, this is a
blood and bone style meal or type of fertilizer. And I'm gonna liberally
sprinkle that around, probably several big handfuls. See it's sprinkled all around, like throwing confetti at wedding. You don't wanna throw this at a wedding, you might get punched in
the face by the bride. Also, I'm planting
established plants in here so I wanna give them a bit of a boost. They've been sitting in their
tiny little seedling tray in their small amount of soil, and they'll need a boost. They're probably already
starting to suffer. Now, on top of this fertilizer, we of course will mulch in. All right, so I've got
several types of zucchini or squash here, and I'm going to plant them into this bed. And because they're fairly big
plants once they get going, I'm going to space them
out nice and evenly. Let's plant one in each
sort of corner here I think to start off with. Part the mulch a bit, dig it down a little and plop him in. And then just backfill, press down, backfill, mulch back. And there you go. Bob's your auntie. Might just go here. It's only a smaller one, this one. I can dig down with my hand, pull it back, push it in, and then backfill. And maybe one here. Willy-nilly, no real logic to it, just good spacing. Now, planting them obviously
a little bit in from the sides because of those big leaves coming out. You don't wanna plan
them close to the edge because then you'll start
blocking off your pathways and they'll be hanging over the bed. Whack the little badge in here so I can remember what they were. And now, even though it's raining heaps and I'm expecting more rain, it's good practice to still give all these
plants and these seeds a good water in. This bed here, because you've got fertilizer
that hasn't been watered in, well, they all have a
little bit, don't they? Except for that first one. And you don't want that fertilizer sort of burning the roots. So give each seedling a good water in, and you wanna water the
mulch down a bit too so it doesn't blow around. And you're also settling the roots. Water these seeds in nicely, and that will start triggering those first stages of germination. And finally, this last bit of corn. Again, a good water in. Keep them moist, and keep an eye on them too. If you see anything digging them up like bush turkeys coming around, well then cover them over, either net the bed or put some type of
frame over the top of it to stop the critters from
digging them up and ruining them. So the more you check on them, and I would say daily,
if not twice, the better. And that's those three beds done. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure you
give it three big thumbs up for three big beds done in this one video. Phew, I tell you what, the humidity is killing me out here, but at least it didn't rain. That's a first for a few weeks. Look, make sure you subscribe
if you haven't already. And also share this video around because that really does
help my channel out heaps. Thanks a lot for watching. Bye for now. Oh, hear the sloshing? Oh, jeeps. And I've got good drainage here too. It's just been manic.
