12 QUICK HACKS FOR YOUR GARDEN

Human urine is completely sterile coming out of the body. It's a fertilizer, but it is salty, so dilute it 10 to 20— 10 or as much as 20 to 1 water to urine. All right, pour it in your garden next to your plants. You might not want to pour it on lettuce you're gonna eat soon or strawberries or something like that. You might not want to pour it on something directly that you're gonna eat soon because, well, that's just gross. If you need food quick, plant stuff like spinach, kale, and lettuce. In less than a week, that's what they look like. In just 4 weeks, they look like this. That'll easily be edible size in just a few weeks. A quick release, affectionately called the world's best quick release— it may very well be— easy to get nozzles on and off. So you just want to use this as a watering hose, fill up a bucket, I could do so. If I want to put on my next feature here, my next pack, a fog it nozzle. If I want to spray down delicate plants and seeds without washing the soil or the seeds away, this is the ticket. While we're at it, notice there's no plastic in this soil starting kit here. Enter the soil blocker. We use the 2-inch soil blocker, just regular Coco Loco Potting soil. Fill that thing up nice and tight. Custom-built wooden tray. No plastic involved. Notice how we plant our seed right on top. Why? Oxygen! Look! They are on top. You don't have to cover them with soil. They get the air. Start sprouting. I wish you guys could smell in here. This non-toxic yet rot-resistant wood is cedar. It's a little bit more expensive, but it lasts a very long time, and you don't have to use toxic-filled stuff like pressure-treated lumber. Plus, it smells really nice and fresh. We had to vent this greenhouse. These are vents. But I don't have to open them. This opens them. As this warms up, it's solarized, it automatically springs and opens these windows. It's a cool day today, but that will automatically be opened as it warms up. A chicken tractor with 3 chickens inside. This chicken tractor is the size of a garden bed, 40-inch by 8-foot. They're— they naturally scratch, which means they're tilling. They naturally which means they're fertilizing. They were just here for 3 days. What if they were here for 2 weeks? They would totally till and prep it for you while your seeds are in the greenhouse growing, your plants are growing. Enter the broadfork. Ride this thing back and forth till it gets all the way down into the ground. Pull it down. Dig it about to your waist. This is new ground. It's never had this done before. It's a little more difficult. What's happening here is we're not turning it, so we're not damaging, but we're aerating and oxygenating it. Water and air will be able to get down in there. That's one of the best things you can do for your garden bed. Chickens were there, you broadforked, you put down some compost, you did some amendments. There's still some grass there. You can't plant a garden in grass, so what do you do? You put down compost, put down your weed barrier, non-toxic You tell I'm excited? Now the weeds can't— now the weeds can't get through. You have some dry or wet grass clippings. Everybody's got a mower, right? There you go. This mimics nature, keeping her covered. She's a modest lady, she likes to be covered. You've got your mulch there. Your chickens were here for 2 weeks, they moved out. This has been sitting here for 2 weeks. Take your transplants, make you a little hole, pierce through the paper, and plant right down in there. For bigger gardens, silage tarp. The chickens were in here, then we put— we shaped our rows, then we put a silage tarp on it. Looks like this underneath. Weeds don't grow, stays nice and supple. Look at that, look at that rich bug life. Encourages worm activity. You move the tarp out and you transplant your transplant. In this case, onions are These plants were just a couple of days ago in the greenhouse. We pulled the sawdust tarp back, transplanted the plants. When you transplant, you still have your ground covered. You pull the ground cover off, you transplant, and these guys are 4 weeks ahead of the weeds. I love cabbages. I will kiss a cabbage. But cabbages are highly susceptible to bug attack. So what do you do? This is natural. This is easy. This is a cover. And now those bugs can't get in there. Rain can easily get in there. And we protect our precious cabbages. Now here's how I'm using some of those hacks in a real life Instant chicken garden miracle. These guys have been growing in a nursery for 3-ish weeks, say. That last week, you want to start bringing them out. So bring them out maybe for a couple of hours. And we plant all our spring crops at once, all our summer crops at once, so we're only having to do this back and forth hardening off. We're not doing it all the time because it could be, you know, it could be a lot if you're taking trays out like this every single day. And you're running out to get them back in if it starts to rain or something. If it's a light rain, it's good because it won't tear up your blocks. Or if your crops are pretty established like this, it'd pretty have to be a pretty big rain to tear up your crops. But put them out for a couple hours the first day, half day the next, 3/4 of a day, full day, and you should be good. And you can actually— why do you call it hardening off? Your plants are actually start feeling tough. They've been resisting wind, they've been getting direct sunlight. Let's make it all make sense. Step number 1: place 3 chickens in place where you want to garden. So they'll be in here working. You've seen our setup. Some considerations: we should probably at least be the drip line away from a tree so we're not in direct shade. South sun, you want to consider that. You want to be able to get some sun. You wouldn't want a big old tree right there. Uh, we got it out of our path, we got it out of our way of our garden. As flat as you can, close to the house as you can. Those are some good ideas for placing your garden bed. At the same time that you put chickens on your garden bed, start your seeds. For step number 2, let's go ahead and move these guys because I want to demo moving them anyway. After 2 weeks, you would move them. They've been peeping their water. Guys, come on. You could move it to another garden bed like what I'm going to do. To do. Move it all the way over. I'm gonna leave a foot for a path. So there you go, that's all you got to do to move it. You would put your waterer back in there, and this is what they've done in just 3 days. If you don't want them to build a garden, just start moving your chickens around every 1, 2, 3 days. Move them around your yard, and by the time this comes back up they didn't till too much there. You could come back in here, so you could just move this around in a loop and come back here by the time all this stuff is recovered. Just look, look how much they like the new stuff. Now what do we do? We broadfork if you have it. We're not turning it, so we're not damaging the soil. And then we just bring it back up. That's it. And go back 6 inches and just do that for the length of your garden bed. Shouldn't take even 20 minutes. Wet down that ground that the chickens were on. It's going to help attract worms, help break things down. Add water. We add amendments if you have it. We add compost. Do get compost. 2 to 3, I'd say 4 inches of compost if you can. 2 to 4 inches of compost. First garden, 4. Maybe if you're doing this again, you could come back here. If you're moving chickens every 2 weeks on a garden bed, you could have 9 garden plots. You could come back here, and even if you planted pumpkins in here, which is 120 days of growth, they would be done. You would have harvested, and you could bring the chickens right back over it. And that's the cool thing. They would till in your— they would get what you didn't get from the pumpkins and whatever else you planted in there. Broadfork, amend, compost. At least do compost. Definitely do weed barrier, okay? Cardboard if you have to in a pinch. And then, uh, grass clippings. Yeah, so as Jonah's mowed all these grass clippings, he could come with a rake and grab all that and put it on his garden bed. It's a little easier with a mower if you've got it. There's so much grass clippings. A mower with a mulch blade will shred it up even finer, but this will work. As you add these layers, so add your compost, sprinkle some water on that, and then add your weed barrier, spray that down with water, and then add your grass. If you're collecting grass clippings, especially early in the morning, you don't need to add anything there, they're, they're wet. And put about 4 to 8 inches of grass clippings on top of that and leave that for 2 weeks. The chickens were there for 2 weeks, and then you've covered it for 2 weeks while your seed starts have been growing in their nursery. By the time you've reached 4 weeks, this has broken down a lot from the mulch. The worms have eaten the chicken manure and whatnot. Your seeds are ready to plant. You've got plants that big. So you would move these chickens out, build, build your mulch. It's sitting there. In 2 weeks, you move the chickens again and you plant this. Guys, from the time you put the chickens on here and started your seeds, if you're growing cold-hardy spring fast-growing crops like lettuce and spinach and kale, you've got food in 60 days. Step 1 is setting your chickens down, starting your seeds. Step 2 is in 2 weeks you're moving them out, you're prepping your garden bed. Step 3 is transplanting at the 4-week mark. Bringing out seeds to plant. The next step would be then to maintain it. You don't have to do much to maintain it in the mulch system or to plant into the system. So you've got your— you, you would have your grass clippings built up here on your layers. You really just pull it to the side. If there's any weed barrier left, it might already be absorbed in the ground. Pierce it with a trowel shovel, a little hand trowel, and just plant directly into the dirt and you've got mulch all around it, that should be protecting you from weeds and a lot of things. So maybe maintain it with water if you're in a dry area. We generally water a little bit every day if it's not raining, in best practices, when we're on top of our game. What are you doing? Okay, so then what would be step number 5? Shove it in. Get your family together and eat it, guys. There'll be nothing like sitting down to a plate of fresh salad and sea monster— cornish cross meat chicken. And we can do that in 60 days. That's crazy. That's going to be delicious. That food's going to have a story.