- Good day, I'm Mark
from Self-Sufficient Me. And in this video, I want
to show you an experiment I've been conducting,
growing veggies and herbs in plastic milk containers. And now I'm going to share
with you the results. Let's get into it. (gentle music) (birds chirping) Now, if you follow my
channel closely, you'd know, that I recently got a slab
poured at the back of our shed. And the reason for that primarily, was that I could have some
type of nursery setup, but not only that, it was
also so that I could conduct some of these mad scientific experiments, particularly based on
small space gardening. So that those of you out there that are living in smaller places,
be encouraged to grow your own fruit, veg and herbs. I've always said, you
needn't have a huge backyard to grow your own food. In fact, small spaces
can be very productive. And that is why I'm experimenting with this type of scenario. I'm looking at the typical,
say university student. Not a lot of money, trying to get by, renting an apartment,
perhaps on a balcony, a bit of a sunny balcony,
that's all you have. And you don't want to waste too much money on buying equipment. Perhaps you can upcycle
or recycle something that you've already purchased. In this case, I've used milk bottles. They're the three liter type. This is the type of milk
carton we buy for our two boys. They drink a heck of a lot of milk. They are also a really good size. But let's just go through the
beginnings of this experiment and how I set it up. First of all, I collected
the milk bottles, of course, and then I just marked
out an area on the front to cut out. It doesn't have to be precise, but what I recommend you do is
cut out a piece of the front so that you maintain the
integrity of the container itself. You want to keep the handle on the back. You also want to keep a
little bit of the top, and because you've got
to have some drainage. I heated up a screwdriver
and I just pushed the drainage holes in on each corner, about a centimeter or half
an inch up from the base of the bottom of the milk bottle. And that way you've got this perfect pot that you can grow a plant
in, that is not only a decent size, but it's
easy to move around. You just have to grab it like you're grabbing a bottle of milk. The soil or the medium that goes into here is important as well. You don't want anything
too heavy, but then again, you don't want anything too light either, because if it's too light
and you're in a warm climate, the plants will dry out way too fast. They're already going
to be limited in space as it is for their route growth, so the last thing you want is
either too heavy or too light soil, so you've got to
try to make that mix. And the mix that I used for
this was slightly heavier than what I would normally use
for a general potting mix. And the way I did that, was
I used some of that own soil mixed in with some of our
own organic fertilizer. It was a well rotted chicken manure, and then I used standard
premium potting mix to get that free draining. I added some Perlite, a
whole bag of it to about three quarters of a wheelbarrow. And also some commercial
organic fertilizer and mixed it all in well. And that's what I used to fill
these milk carton containers to grow these plants in. So the seeds that I sewed
were lettuce, carrots, radish, beans, a dwarf bean variety. So they're not a climbing bean,
so they don't grow very big. Some basil, some chives and also cucumber. And that cucumber is a dwarf variety. I sewed a number of seeds in
each container to make sure that at least had some
that would germinate. And then once I had the germination, I then fend the seedlings
out to one or two, sometimes three plants per container. The basil I left grow a little more, because I wanted that to bush out. It didn't really matter too much. The cucumber, I thinned
out to two plants only. And that was the same with the
radish, two to three plants for radish, about two for
lettuce, and about two, roughly for the carrots,
maybe three here or there. Once the plants were thinned out, then it was just a matter
of leaving them grow and maintaining those
plants and ensuring that they got the best care possible so that you could get maximum
crop value out of it. And how did I do that? Well, you've got to of course, water the plants and feed them. And I watered these regularly. Part of the issue I had,
we're coming into summer, and I knew that many of these plants wouldn't like the extra heat. And I also knew that it
would even be a little more challenging, because
you're growing them in small containers like this that are susceptible to dry out faster. I was watering these plants every day, but over this last month especially, it got so hot that I
actually had to move these plants to several different locations. Even then I ended up having
to get shade cloth and cover them from that direct sun. If I could have grown these
couple of months earlier, I think I would have
had even better results. I did also fertilize, but I didn't fertilize for the first, at least four weeks or so. Let the plants establish, let
them suck up that fertilizer, that or where it already was
within the medium itself, because you don't want
to over fertilize either. You can kill your plants with love. So after about a month, I started fertilizing every two weeks with a liquid fertilizer, and that was enough to sustain the plants and keep them going. When you're watering regularly, the problem can be that
you wash fertilizer out of the container, before the plants get a chance to grab
hold of it and use it. So that's why regular fertilizer
is critical when you're growing in containers like this. And I'm thinking, to be honest with you, that I probably could have
upped the fertilize a little more, maybe fertilized once a week, but I'll continue to test this
out and also let these plants finish growing out, even
though we're getting into the wrong time of
year and they will soon start to fail no matter what anyway, hence why I wanted to
get this out to you now. So let's just quickly go through
these plants and see where we're at with them. The lettuce, this now because of the heat and it's getting so warm, it's starting to go to seed. Well, it hasn't yet,
but it's starting to get into a position where
it's growing out to seed. That's the second plant. This first one here is isn't yet. It's still growing some good lettuce and it's probably going
to taste quite well. I haven't been harvesting
much of it to eat or anything like that. I've just been cutting
it back a little bit to promote some extra growth. And yeah, it's very nice, no
problems at all with that. The carrots, well, they're still growing. And at this time a year, it's not un- Horsefly. It's not unusual for
carrots to be a little slow. They have to develop a root. So I'm going to keep these
going for a little bit longer. I'll try to pick out the biggest one. And that's that one. You can see it's developing well, no problems at all, but it's nowhere big enough to eat, but it's working and
the leaves are healthy. No problem at all. The radish, this one's got three in it. This variety is only a
small bulb of radish. Let's pick one out. It's fairly healthy looking. Not bad at all. There we go. There's soil all over it. There, no worries. Nice, bit of dirt in there,
but you get what I mean. It's it's working. The beans. There you go. Some good mature beans
coming up and growing and some smaller ones. Crunchy, nice, no problems. Plants look a little sick, probably suffering again
from the extra heat, but it's working. It is working. As far as herbs go, you got the chives, which is still starting to grow out. They're growing nice and healthy as well. Slowly, but once they get established, chives will grow very well
and you can cut them back and they'll grow again of course. Basil, this is also growing quite well. And it's not a bad time of year
for basil or chives, really. Chives will grow all year round here. Basil doesn't mind it too hot. As long as you keep the water up. And we've been cutting
this back and using it. So, and it helps bush it out too. But the basil, this is
a sweet basil variety. very healthy, very crunchy, bulky, you know plump, nice. Smells beautiful, so that's a success. And finally the cucumber, dwarf cucumber. We're going to get a couple out of this. There's one small one here, and
there's another one up here, few more flowers. But to be honest, it's
the wrong time of year now for cucumbers, all of our
cucumbers in the garden are starting to die back. You really got to pump
the water into them. And for the next few months
you can't grow cucumbers in this part of the world. When summer's over and we
start getting into autumn is the next time to plant cucumbers. And the other thing I probably would do, is keep it to one plant. I can see through here
that it's a bit root bound and you've got two plants competing. I don't think we should
be trying to make them fight it out in such a small container. So what do you think, do you think growing in
milk containers like this was a successful experiment? I'll leave it up to you. Put your comments below
in the comments section so that we can all learn from them. I think there's more I
can get out of these. And I think growing it
at the right time of year would be a good start. Fertilizing a little more,
thinning out a little more as well would help grow these plants into even better specimens and more realistic food crops for a small space. By the way, if you want
to see follow up content on this experiment, I'll be showing that on my second channel,
Self Sufficient Me 2. So check that out. I guess overall, what I want people to take
away from this experiment is the fact that, you
don't need a lot of space. You can grow these types of food crops, and I'm going to be trying
many different others using the same experiment
in recycled materials, such as a milk carton and get
some good results out of it. You're able to supplement a food bill. Herb's alone are expensive
as heck at the supermarket. Why not grow your own? They grow well in small
containers like this, but you've got that recycling aspect. And I think the concept is sound. I want to refine it a lot more yet and get better at it myself. And I'll be sharing those
experiments with you and also different types of crops
that we can grow in here. Let's get better at together. But yeah, if you enjoy this video, make sure you give it a big thumbs up and share the video around, because that helps heaps. Subscribe to the channel,
if you haven't already. Thanks for watching, bye for now.
