FedEx tinkerer custom builds no-waste micro farmstead

so we've got here hops so these are doing fairly well we've got more bananas over there the pineapple over here blackberries pomegranates mint figs here you see some dragon fruit like here's a real good looking one oh we've got here this is a hops neo mexicana on the plants here i'm watering them free hand with the hose but if you see the pipes coming off it drains back to a tank over there and it's got a float switch in it so when it fills up that pumps it back up onto the dragon fruit plants so it gets a double use out of them so what i do is i've got a little bit of water coming in and then the electric pump to where i can start the pump going so but you can see the pomegranates coming up and yeah do you think that los angeles people could be doing this more oh yeah we've got lots of sunlight so it's almost over abundance of sunlight you have to put shade cloth up to moderate you can see how this is a real dark blue in the full sunlight it gets very hot so the ground would build up heat so that's where i developed the hula skirts to put on the buckets this one she's not as modest but she should keep her dress up it keeps the bucket from getting the heat buildup i like trying to get the system going and if i can improve it you know i'm a mechanic i figure i can tweak the system to where it runs good these are mint plants what i do is say i water this it drains down to the table and you see the pipes on the bottom and it connects into this barrel which is interconnected there so a lot of that is recirculated you know like a car mechanic you're trying to tune the engine to get the best results out of what you have so i'm trying to tune my agricultural engine to get the best results so you have the little hops cones grow in there so use hops to make beer right but they're not using this hops to make sure well well they're making enough for a novelty breer they call it rooftop ale we're getting the the hops to grow it should be in a more bavarian washington state type environment but it will grow here if you give it the right food interesting it's the food yeah well the nutrient base plenty of nitrogen you know basically you're throwing it in here what is it this is my duck manure compost and you just dump it in here shake it and it drops in and your top dressing so that's what gives it the greenery you know this is almost like terraforming you know basically you're building an environment but yeah i'll bring the manure and fertilizer processed from the house so you've got your nitrogen source right there and that helps you know get the greenery growing without the nitrogen input it's not going to grow do you think that when you're in a city you have to be smarter about how you garden yeah you don't have as much room whereas if you're out in a rural area compared to urban you don't have as much real estate here available and with this your container gardening you've got the roof but you have to bring your own soil so when you came here what did this roof look like flat and nothing so they weren't using the roof no it's a little backyard it's just hooking up the plumbing i've got another 100 feet of tubing there to make the drainage system this is the older compost that's the shredded coconut husks to drain the water through the drainage holes let the water drain into the bottom and out the drain pipe on the side right now what i'm doing is getting the plumbing going for the return system so all of the drain water will come over here and go to a sump so that sets the pump on and off you can see the irrigation and so that'll you know pump into the system to irrigate the plants well this one is growing on my compost so this one has my compost soil mix underneath like here the potential if you keep giving the food it'll grow well we been operating here for the past two years and when we started we were looking for a way to get rid of our spent grain without having to throw it away and so we placed an ad on craigslist and that's where we found ray ray was actually the first respondent this is what the grain looks like coming out ray told us that he turns spangrain into compost and uses it for other things so we began a relationship with him i got my helpers trying to help themselves when i'm in the heavy grain mode i'll put in about two three gallons of grain in each one of these beds every day and keep working it in [Applause] the brewery what happened was i'm doing composting on a continuous basis for around here you know for in the garden and trying to get expanding it so i'd look at craigslist for compost capabilities they've got like orange peels so now i've gone around to juice bars kale carrot tops apples and then the coffee grounds it's about two percent nitrogen so it's really good for the composting also you know the carrots and the orange pulp so before like when i was doing a truckload of tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff i'd have like 100 gallons of water juice to dispose of so now with this material it is really good also it helps the chickens out they really love this stuff this stuff i don't compost directly i put it out for the chickens to go through it first and then they do their thing with it a couple different styles of composting this one here is it has quite a bit of the coffee and stuff like that in it with the coffee grounds that goes pretty quickly it starts developing the mycelium for the mushrooms and stuff with this it's like a slow release tablet whereas you get a really good growth out of it and it continues for an extended period of time that was a orphaned grapefruit tree this is the foyu it gives you a persimmons this big that one is a seedling of valencia orange i've got to pick out a tree and stick it in there i'll probably put in another citrus they're nice and hearty this olive tree i haven't had too many olives on it yet it's still fairly young so maybe we'll get into doing olives this one is a caracara orange this one is not that old a tree this is also a seedling this is pretty much a pomelo these are small right now they'll be bigger than the grapefruits on the other side this is a pomelo orange cross it's a seedling from growing in the yard so this has the potential of being like this this is a valencia orange and it's like constantly oranges on it it just gives and gives back in the day los angeles was heavy into citrus yeah you know nice thing about this area it's got a nice mediterranean climate and it's just a few minutes away like two exits from downtown l.a so it's it's pretty much the middle of the city but quite urban for doing you're trying to pack a lot in there right yeah i'm trying to double deck because i don't have a lot of footprint area so in order to get more on there you start stacking up got apple trees in this area washington navel orange bears lime sweet potatoes we've got it in a pharaoh cement structure it's about an inch thick so so are you able to use the sidewalk like this [Laughter] they haven't run me off if i had to i could take and turn it on its side roll it around and bring it in the yard this is a avocado it's a seedling from little cotto there was like three or four seedlings that i put in here and i've cut a lot of the other ones off that were more susceptible to the mold on the leaves like the blight i've been using the uh duck juice on it i have the extract that i get every day so it gets a ration of the nitrogen solution and this is a oral blanco grapefruit it gives good size fruit and yeah it does well again we're feeding it the nitrogen solution from the duck pen in there there's a bucket buried into the ground it's an open bottom five gallon bucket so it has manure and compost and stuff put in there so i come and fill it up with water and it percolates through and it makes a tea in place in shittu as they call it on-site you know you can see what it does for the citrus how long how long did some of these take to grow and do they grow faster because of what you're doing um the citrus grows a lot quicker with heavy nutrients they grow like crazy so the neighbors i've kind of introduced them i've got them hooked on that i'm i'm the pusher for the nutrients for their trees and stuff i i give them the good [Music] this is your front yard yeah you don't leave any space uncovered yeah right [Music] lots of places where i'm building the soil so this one's pretty much finished compost this is pretty much straight duck manure sitting in there i dump the water on it so it helps feed the trees these are full of compost and potting soil you know the same way here this is a plank going across for the ducks where they can come across little guy's coming from the jacuzzi area over to the the feeding yeah they section healthy yeah they get plenty to eat varied well if you want to come over this way why ducks very nutritious eggs good sized eggs so you can see the grain that they're eating and go through about 60 gallons three 20-gallon trash cans a week so they get well fed this is the way i preserve the the grain this one i've pretty much used up what i have is this grain this is one day's meal you're buying a lot of grain then no i get it for free i raise hops on the top of a brewery i take three trash cans a week you can see this is the the grain it's preserved in beer you don't want to be around this when it starts going off the bacteria get into it and it just goes foul and with the boards on top of the grain it's like when you're doing sauerkraut or pickles you put the plate on top of the pickles and it holds it down below the brine well instead of brine we're using beer it's the dregs of the end of a brew and they dump it down the drain so what i did is i came and got like about 10 gallons of that sludge that comes off of the bottom with all the yeast as long as you keep the grain underneath the beer you can keep it the grain for a month and it won't go bad so you can stockpile so i've got like this one with about 40 gallons or more of grain in there and then the same way over here with another 40 or 50 gallons of grain and the beer keeps the grain preserved so you stockpile because how did you come up with this solution well experimenting you know it's it's my own technique up here this is kind of a recirculating area like that's the duck bath area but this was day old water and what i'd done is pump the water over into this side so it's a just about 500 gallons of water down below here and so the water is a little bit cloudy because of the duck bath water that goes in here but what i do is there's a pump inside here and it's bringing the water over to the spearmint okay what it also is good is crayfish food the mint goes all year long so you can okay if you look in right there you can see the crayfish oh my gosh oh yeah there's dozens of them in here that's another addition into the circuit here they eat i throw the mint in here and when i've got more tender grape leaves i'll throw the grape leaves in there but the thing that holds them through the winter is the mint leaves so inside here is also crayfish of different sizes but and why crayfish well they're like a bottom feeder you know they're the cleanup crew what the fish don't eat and you know comes from the ducks and this and that they filter feed that material so they help break it down so in this system i have the water sitting in there for a week and the ducks are doing their thing inside of it so it gets a tint by the end of a week it's starting to turn green so that's when i put the pump inside and have it uh circulate into here and then i refill that get it cleaned up and then they get to work on it for another week so this one here has siphon tubes that brings the water from here into here siphons over into here and as the pump from this one pumps it up onto the mint it flows back down through here and in there i've got a very fine filter sac that is capturing the leaves and the bigger particulate and help bringing it out of the system so it'll you know just keep circulating and in a couple of days it'll be fairly clear but then you take and dump the material in there again and it clouds it up but but the big point is that you're getting nutrients right and and you can see what it does for this one it's got roots and stuff coming out of the bottom of the bucket onto the sand and it has like its own little nutrient-rich creek running by so these are ripening faster than the ones in the backyard that's fabulous so you're getting is it nitrogen or what are you getting well you're getting nitrogen and minerals because the ducks are eating a lot of grain they're not real well on not pooping in the bath water so it gets pretty rich in nitrogen do you eat crayfish can you eat these yes but i've got to get the system a lot bigger you know like i've got a couple dozen right now if i had a good meal well it'd take a while to build back up but they are a good part of the system to develop there's a lot of worms and stuff mixed in so they're rummaging through you get maggots in the manure and the chickens will be scratching through it getting the maggots and stuff like that so as far as pest control you is there any system you put in place chickens and poultry you have mite problems you know you can have problems so what i've got for that is a solarizer so once or twice a week i'll take this the nest box out and put it in a solarizer so what i have is the blue plastic which helps absorb the heat and there's two nest boxes sitting underneath the clear plastic so it's a hot house you take and put the box inside there solarize it for a couple days and then you swap out and you keep doing that and it keeps the pests under control these are strawberries instead of strawberries i could really call them gravel berries because strawberries they mulch them with straw i've gone to where i just mulch them with rocks you know when the fruit comes and lays on the soil you have a problem with mold or losing the fruit now if you put the gravel on there it's really easy to keep the fruit from getting rotted and and it keeps the moisture in the soil and these are the different strawberries what i do is this one has the holes in the cup but this one retains a little bit of moisture so you don't have to water it as often so i've got a multi multitude of these trays where i've got sand inside the containers and so you when you're watering it retains the moisture on the little cups and you don't dry out as fast so i've got more of these trays there's a berm of sand so i can fill this up but it doesn't run out right away it takes hours for it to trickle down so i'll have it running into this bucket this one i haven't taken the mosquito eggs out yet but i've got a net so every couple days i'll come and pull the the eggs off and give them to the mosquito fish and then this what i'll do is take the whole bunch of water from here and dump the whole lot up in here so any eggs or mosquitoes that are starting in here will filter through the sand and it'll drip back into the bucket and i've got some mosquito fish in here just a few to keep the mosquitoes down and again this is the water that gets pumped from the other side it's recirculating the water from the front porch so you're able to use a lot less water yeah okay how big is your yard uh i think it's like 50 feet by about 90 some i'd have to get the tape measure out so not very big no and it has two houses on one lot so it's kind of limited in the the square footage you got available for growing this water gets recirculated back to the irrigation water the same way any water that's dumped on here goes down to this lower area and then it drops into a hole with a bucket in it and a sump pump in it and so when it collects in the sump pump area it pumps it up to the little fish pond up on top so you re-circulate you know the water and like i say this is the oro blanco grapefruit and this is like a lemonade flavored one as far as the taste of things you eat versus the things you buy do you perceive the difference well the citrus and stuff it's a full flavor it's quite juicy you're done eating sugar no it's sweet yeah so you're getting back to what la was known for earlier yeah right we've gone to a hotter drier you know climate the winters used to be wet now you have the pests that are associated with that dry you know weather but this is still and to be able to go outside your house and pick a piece of fruit when you want did your wife ever want to have a flower garden or anything else that you know did you ever complain about not well not too badly how much are you able to produce in your yard in general we produce all the food well fruits you eat fruit fruits yeah we you know we have plenty of citrus and stuff like that do you think that more people should do this yeah if they have areas to grow the trouble is is you either have to have a nitrogen source or a chemical fertilizer the plants do not go with nothing you know it's like making stone soup like the guy says i can make stone soup but it'd taste a lot better if we had a little bit of meat to put in the pot and you know it needs a little bit something else in this and after you put the pork chop and the bones and this and everything the stone soup tastes great so it's a it's a whole system right [Applause] so i can throw the grain and the spoils that are coming out of the duck pen and the chicken area and it feeds the trees i gave the trees a haircut now you've got a comfortable area to walk around in with the shade of the trees so even in the middle of the summer it can be fairly pleasant you know compared to the sun you know because what happens when there are no trees in the street oh it gets hot you know your cement and everything absorbs the heat the trees you radiate the heat away from them by transpiring the moisture so it's a natural swamp cooler type of ferret how long have you been experimenting in your yard uh since the late 60s you know trying different trees you know like i say the oranges and stuff like that to try one at seven eight years just to go from a seedling okay now you're getting fruit all it took was seven or eight years and then you you get it and this is going to be that uh red or crimson colored on the inside you know you really i mean you've been a long time researching all this yeah experimenting and seeing what will work and and stuff like that just because you love it [Applause] but do you want to make a change in how we i get paid pretty well at work but i just can't go out and get the good fruit like this what's your job aircraft mechanic we call it avionics look at that color isn't that great the thing is is we have to build the soil so that we can produce the material that we want this is a compost pile oh wow there's a compost here too right it's a huge bump it's labor intensive but do you want to make a change in how we do agriculture and urban agriculture is that part of your world uh experimenting and seeing what i can do and so you've got a compost tea that's coming into this so i take the pump i have over there you know for growing my own when i had my own going i really liked it you know but you know oh thank you all right

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 221,224

Keywords: master composter, rooftop gardening, rooftop garden, rooftop farm, container gardening, hyperlocal, composting, duck manure, home citrus, los angeles, backyard farm, urban homestead, home orchard, street trees, street fruit, super compost, restaurant waste, brewing waste, backyard ducks, backyard chickens, aquaponics, permaculture, water recycling, garden water recycling, crawfish aquaponics, rooftop fruit, rooftop orchard, ramutis narkevicius, food system, high yield

Id: RwHPb66Ag_c

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021