229 Do This Now - Buddy's TOP10 Winter Garden Starts

Please Help Us - Support TOPS Bunker as Low as 3$ mo. Click Here...!!!

Tonight, we’re talking about Winter Garden Starts.

I know… it’s January… it’s a frozen tundra out there… it’s below freezing and in some places like here, it’s below zero. I sure as hell don’t want to be working in my garden in ski pants and snow boots… hands all numb and frozen boogers in my beard. Hell No.

And therein lies the beauty of it…

My garden isn’t outside under a foot of snow. It’s inside. In the warmth of my grow-room. A 20 x 15’ area of work space in the basement with shelves and grow lights, seed starting mixes and potting soils, and seed trays sitting on top of heating mats.

There’s a bar-height table with a 36x36” black plastic drain pan that we’ve repurposed as a work surface to keep soil, compost, and water from reaching the floor.

Now don’t be trying to picture some pristine climate-controlled sciency type of space.

Noooo… This is at best, a piece-mealed and frankensteined mash of incompatible interconnected tools of the trade acquired over time and sourced from the cheapest vendors, mostly Amazon and Walmart, and sometimes free… think Dirty Garden Hoe dumpster-diving on the way back from the feed store kind of free… All tossed together and organized into a perfect form of dirty workspace.

Does yours have to be as big as ours? No it doesn’t. It can be smaller, much smaller. Probably should be smaller. We found out last season that our grow-room is actually not big enough. Remember, our garden is 1250 sqf… I’ve lived in apartments that were half that size. And this next season, we’re adding another 1250 sqf to it… though I haven’t quite figured out exactly how yet but, it’s gonna happen. We need that space. But, even if you’re in a smaller space like an apartment or a flat, you can and should have a grow-room, be it a little corner of the bedroom or window ledges in the living room or countertops in the kitchen or bathroom… or all of the above.

Now is the time to start.

And Buddy’s got you covered. He’s got a Top 10 list all about what we need to be doing right now in the dead of Winter, so that our gardens will be lush and plentiful come Spring.

TOPS Bunker Podcast YouTube Channel

SpeakPipe/TOPS

TOPSBunker.com

Refuge Medical Use TOPSBUNKER10 at Checkout for 10% Discount

Please Visit Our Affiliate Links to Find Great Preparedness Products:

• Grow Light - Full Spectrum 4'
• Grow Light - Full Spectrum 2'x2'
• VivoSun Heat Mat for Seedlings 10"x20"
• VivoSun Seed Tray Heat Mat Combo
• HaxNicks 20 Cell Rapid Root Trainer Trays
• VivoSun Grow Tent System 4'x2'
• Surge Protector Strip 1625W 8 Slot +USB
• 12/3 HD SJTW Ext Cord w/3 Outlets 6'Cord
• Happy Frog Organic Potting Soil 2 CF
• VivoSun Worm Farm 3-Layer Kit w/Tools
• Uncle Jims Red Wigglers Worms 500 Count Live

Transcript

Preppers, Survivalists, Off-Gridders, Homesteaders, and the Like, welcome to Tops Bunker, a Podcast for Preppers.

Email SHTF@TOPSBunker.com

Website TOPSBunker.com

And the brand new… TOPS Bunker Podcast YouTube Channel

Please check the show notes in your podcast player for a link to help support the show…

There, You’ll find,

Valuable products and gear…

And, extra info on this episode.

Also, please VISIT and JOIN - Tops Bunker Facebook Group. You’ll Love the interaction with other Preppers and Like-Minded Folks.

And don’t forget, we’re now on YouTube. Look for the TOPS Bunker Podcast Channel on YouTube or just click the link in the show notes. We’ll have tons of content from tutorials to homesteading to product reviews as well as the podcast episodes. And did I forget to mention… we’ll soon be transitioning to a video podcast format so you can listen to the show and watch the show if that’s your thing. Now that the YouTube channel is up and running, we can start doing livestreams as well. Lot’s of great content is on the horizon.

I want to thank you all for joining us…

We've got a great show for ya.

Tonight, we’re talking about Winter Starts for your Garden.

I know… it’s January… it’s a frozen tundra out there… it’s below freezing and in some places like here, it’s below zero. I sure as hell don’t want to be working in my garden in ski pants and snow boots… hands all numb and frozen boogers in my beard. Hell No.

And therein lies the beauty of it…

My garden isn’t outside under a foot of snow. It’s inside. In the warmth of my grow-room. A 20 x 15’ area of work space in the basement with shelves and grow lights, seed starting mixes and potting soils, and seed trays sitting on top of heating mats.

There’s a bar-height table with a 36x36” black plastic drain pan that we’ve repurposed as a work surface to keep soil, compost, and water from reaching the floor.

Now don’t be trying to picture some pristine climate-controlled sciency type of space.

Noooo… This is at best, a piece-mealed and frankensteined mash of incompatible interconnected tools of the trade acquired over time and sourced from the cheapest vendors, mostly Amazon and Walmart, and sometimes free… think Dirty Garden Hoe dumpster-diving on the way back from the feed store kind of free… All tossed together and organized into a perfect form of dirty workspace.

You… my friends, can and should have something similar set up or about to be set up where you're at.

Does it have to be as big as ours? No it doesn’t. It can be smaller, much smaller. Probably should be smaller. We found out last season that our grow-room is actually not big enough. Remember, our garden is 1250 sqf… I’ve lived in apartments that were half that size. And this next season, we’re adding another 1250 sqf to it… though I haven’t quite figured out exactly how yet but, it’s gonna happen. We need that space… But, even if you’re in a smaller space like an apartment or a flat, you can and should have a grow-room, be it a little corner of the bedroom or window ledges in the living room or countertops in the kitchen or bathroom… or all of the above.

Now is the time to start.

And Buddy’s got you covered. He’s got a Top 10 list all about what we need to be doing right now in the dead of Winter, so that our gardens will be lush and plentiful come Spring.

Let’s get to it.   

And so what is your vacation mode? I mean, what what is your vacation, first of all?

00:00:06.05
Buddy
it's well every day is vacation for me but no it's just it seemed like i got in that holiday kind of mode where you know you get out of your name your main routine so uh i was still trying to work out and do things but uh yeah just my normal daily i call it a battle rhythm um

00:00:08.06
Keith
yeah

00:00:14.20
Keith
Oh, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:00:25.91
Buddy
yes I have a a series of things that happen from the time ah the alarm clock goes off to you know usually until the end of the day. and kind of red It's not really regimented like crazy, but you know I try to do and follow some things and get on some websites and podcasts and do some things.

00:00:44.90
Buddy
and ah that yeah well it's it's It's an Army term, battle rhythm.

00:00:46.15
Keith
I like the way that sounds. A a battle regimen. that's That's kind of cool. Battle ready? Battle rhythm.

00:00:56.38
Buddy
Yeah. So it's just, it's just a daily, you know, regimen of stuff to do. um

00:01:03.80
Buddy
Just to keep, you know, i don't know. I mean, some people call it a schedule.

00:01:07.54
Keith
Well, it like... like a like a ah Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was saying in that speech to to all of his generals and everybody else that that he he's expecting the start of day for everyone to be PT.

00:01:23.75
Buddy
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's a,

00:01:25.94
Keith
that's a little I mean, i thought I love where he's coming from, but doesn't that seem a little insane, especially for some of the 50s, 60s, 70-year-olds? Or are there 70-year-olds and 60-year-olds in the military? I don't know.

00:01:38.04
Buddy
ah Yes, definitely 60, maybe some 70, some admirals, maybe some some generals. But, you know, they should have been doing this their whole career. mean, i yeah I think somewhere in the GWAT, you know, the 20 years we were at the Global War of Terrorism, we our battle rhythm was such that, you know, we were fighting, the you know, that 50-meter war in front of us and and didn't see the the next war.

00:01:47.58
Keith
they got very They got very complacent with that with that kind of stuff.

00:02:07.29
Buddy
And kind of got out of the rhythm and just, you know, the the PT thing, you know, i I try to stay, you know, keep a rhythm of some sort, a PT regimen going during deployments and stuff.

00:02:07.26
Keith
Right.

00:02:23.40
Buddy
You know, I used to call it Operation Prism Big. you're kind of, you feel like a prisoner when you're in a fob sometimes. So, you know, hitting the gym daily was something I try to do.

00:02:36.30
Buddy
It's just good for your your health, you know, mental health and physical health and, you know, keeps your blood flowing and keeps cortisol levels down and all these things. So, you know, it's just good overall, you know.

00:02:52.31
Buddy
So, yeah, I try to,

00:02:53.06
Keith
I believe my battle rhythm is, is, uh, is wrong because it's, i believe it's creating cortisol and fat and laziness. Uh, I need to switch it up. I am not not saying I'm not active and I don't have tons of jobs to do and I'm not working.

00:03:07.66
Keith
What I'm saying is that those tons of jobs that I'm doing and that activity that I'm doing is much harder. Uh, I don't, I need more energy. I need more you know, physical pump to get through it.

00:03:21.06
Keith
Cause I have to do the the work has to, has to get done, you know?

00:03:24.66
Buddy
Well, and we talked about this last podcast, but most, you look at most farmers out there and you you talked about your dad or I guess it was your dad. i was talking about my dad or your grandpa, somebody you've talked about that had, you know, I call, you know, corn fed cock strong, you know, they're just, they, they might have a belly.

00:03:39.16
Keith
Right.

00:03:42.25
Keith
Right.

00:03:44.89
Buddy
They might be, they might look like, ah you know, there might be a little overweight, but these guys can go all day long chopping wood, you know, throwing hay bales, you know, they're just because they've been doing it so many years that it's just second nature to them.

00:03:59.40
Buddy
And, and you know, it's not really a choice. It's just, it has to be done. So they go do it. So.

00:04:03.83
Keith
Well, well like you like i said my like I said before, my battle rhythm is is off. And I'll give you a for instance, I have not eaten yet today. And it's already, you what, almost three, four o'clock in the afternoon?

00:04:15.94
Keith
It's getting you know getting coming to the evening.

00:04:17.21
Buddy
Yeah.

00:04:17.99
Keith
i have any iny i always had All I've had today is coffee.

00:04:18.20
Buddy
Well, and.

00:04:21.88
Buddy
Wow. Yeah, and, uh, no.

00:04:23.87
Keith
That's not good, man. That's bad. I'm just, I haven't been hungry. I've been, I've been in the studio nonstop from this early this morning until right now, I'm still working on the post-production on the podcast that's being released tonight.

00:04:36.44
Buddy
Yeah, it's, um, it's a thing.

00:04:37.99
Keith
You know, said that so if I was to like go out and work right now for an hour or whatever, let's say, you know, take a break and go out and work, I would have zero energy to do it.

00:04:40.73
Buddy
Yeah.

00:04:48.38
Buddy
Well, you know, the worst thing that happened to mike my mental health and and just for me in general was when I got a desk job. And, you know, was time, you know, in your in your military career, sometime, you know, especially you start getting up in rank, you got more paperwork. So I ended up in an office.

00:05:06.52
Buddy
And if I didn't get up and walk away for, you know, sometimes I just, like in New York, you know, i just go out for a walk. I grab T-shirts and some business cards and, you know,

00:05:16.25
Keith
Yeah.

00:05:17.96
Buddy
take it off, you know, go ahead and start talking to people. Just, you know, get out of that.

00:05:20.31
Keith
I've seen people in office buildings get up out of the chair and just go walk up and down the stairs for a little bit.

00:05:24.54
Buddy
Yeah. Walk the stairs. See that at hospitals sometimes, but I would have to get out and go. And then, you know, when I was moved to an armory, then I was, you know, you have gyms and stuff in your armory or there's some, so there's always something, you know, you can work out with. So, you know, whether it's, you know,

00:05:45.49
Buddy
There's PT going on all the time. So I would get up and say, okay, at two o'clock, two to three is when I go and I go get some workout, just anything.

00:05:47.49
Keith
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

00:05:54.62
Buddy
I might go in there just get on the bike and and read. or treadmill and and watch the news, you know, get in there and pump some iron, whatever it may be. But it's just something I had to put into the battle rhythm for the day.

00:06:07.46
Buddy
And it was on, you know, I had a little calendar right there, you know, desktop calendar, and it's written in there for the day, two o'clock, go work out, you know, highlighted.

00:06:17.25
Keith
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

00:06:18.39
Buddy
And so, you know, as far as not eating, i used to do that all the time. it would be eight o'clock at night before I'd eat just because I felt like I was in my excuse was I'm too busy. I have to actually make myself eat now.

00:06:31.03
Buddy
And a lot of times I'm not hungry. But after about two weeks of making myself eat and I'm trying to get in like at least four meals a day, light, smaller meals.

00:06:41.75
Buddy
Take your plate, half protein, half carbs, and then take your carbs and take that in half and do you know green leafy carbs and then starchy carbs. And do four of those a day and then a shake in the morning and at night.

00:06:52.94
Keith
Mm-hmm.

00:06:58.65
Buddy
First meal the day is a shake after I work out. you know And I try to fast, you know the intermittent fasting we've talked about before. try to do 10 hours intermittent fasting, at least sometimes 12.

00:07:09.91
Buddy
And then go into my meals. And it's hard to eat, you know, to cram them in there. And I always have food left over and I just throw it in for the next meal and try to eat it. But I got so much food to eat that day and I need to eat it.

00:07:23.29
Buddy
So it's hard.

00:07:23.81
Keith
Do you, do you know a, you just sparked a little interest in me. Did you, um, do you know a nutritionist or somebody in that sort of a field that could talk about fasting?

00:07:34.44
Keith
Cause that would, that would really be a good thing for prep or survival, especially if you're going into an SSGF situation, you're going to need to know how to fast and, and, and then how to start eating after the fast and and all that, that might be a, that might be something we need to dive into.

00:07:42.33
Buddy
Oh, yeah, yeah. um

00:07:48.73
Buddy
Yeah, I do know somebody. I've got him on for some other things. I mean, he's going to be a repeat offender for us.

00:07:56.44
Keith
Cool. Cool.

00:07:57.69
Buddy
So, yeah, yeah.

00:07:58.25
Keith
Yeah.

00:07:58.65
Buddy
But, i you know, we talked about cortisol. One of the things he was telling me about cortisol the other day is as part of that, you know, not eating and part of the complacency, you know, just not, you know.

00:08:10.38
Keith
I don't know what cortisol is. I just know that it's bad for you. makes you fat, makes you lazy, makes you tired. It makes it makes you do all makes you have pains in your body, all kinds of stuff. I don't know where it comes from or how to get rid of it. I wish I did.

00:08:22.55
Buddy
Yeah, um I'm starting to educate myself on it now, but a lot of things he's telling me you know to do and there's supplements you take and, you know oh, just go to drink, you know make sure you're getting 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C you know maybe a couple times a day, at least once a day, you know stuff like that.

00:08:38.11
Buddy
And I'm like, that's too simple. You know i mean?

00:08:39.93
Keith
So there's no quick fix. You've got to do a regimen of different types of things. You've got to change your habits, I'm assuming.

00:08:45.49
Buddy
It's habits and in and diet, man. A lot of the stuff is diet. And at one point in my life, I was pre-diabetic. And I had high blood pressure. I had all these things going on. And um I was like, what the hell?

00:08:56.66
Buddy
You know, I've never had this before. I've never had, it you know, high cholesterol. I've never had on any of this stuff. But a lot of it was complacency.

00:09:02.23
Keith
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:09:04.27
Buddy
You know, I was just laying around like a like I would, you know, I was a a dog laying in the yard, you know, of just not really doing much, not really doing much.

00:09:11.86
Keith
Right.

00:09:13.79
Buddy
So. But anyways.

00:09:16.12
Keith
What do you want to talk about tonight?

00:09:16.34
Buddy
Yeah.

00:09:18.58
Buddy
and Well, I'm still confused on what we need to talk about, but we can talk about anything.

00:09:23.06
Keith
um ah i cut I cut that right off because if we don't, we'll just end up having another shit show discussion about nothing.

00:09:29.11
Buddy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

00:09:30.20
Keith
Yeah.

00:09:32.06
Buddy
Definitely. um Well, we can talk about, you know, 10 things to do. We can talk about the 10 things to do to start thinking about now for your garden, and it'll be a fairly short show.

00:09:44.25
Keith
I think that's a great idea. Yeah. And that was our plan for, for this week anyway, was to talk about that.

00:09:48.87
Buddy
Yeah.

00:09:49.80
Keith
This it's January it's, it's coming towards the middle to end of January and, Now's the time to start thinking about that garden. We are here at the homestead for sure. And I've been looking at tons of of stuff on YouTube where some of the people I follow, some of the subscriptions that I follow um that are gardeners and they're, they're on it. mean, it's January and they're on, you know, they got snow in their yard and they're on it. They're, they're doing stuff now to prepare for spring.

00:10:19.10
Keith
So it's It's the time, man. And you know i mean you know gardening You're you know this is what you did you know you're a gardener, more or less

00:10:28.63
Buddy
Yeah. And, um, you know, um I've gotten away from actually, you know, hands-on stuff just because of, uh, I moved and I just don't have the, you know, the, the setup like I had before, but I'm starting to get back into it.

00:10:41.91
Buddy
Um, I've made some contacts with some people that are in the industry still, and, uh, they're, they're going to come on the show. I've got some, uh, some, you know, PhD level people coming on and some, uh,

00:10:55.06
Buddy
you know, back alley PhDs coming on in in a few things for a few episodes. But I mean, these people have been there and done it.

00:11:00.98
Keith
Right.

00:11:02.10
Buddy
They're running successful businesses in gardening.

00:11:05.37
Keith
Right.

00:11:05.50
Buddy
And, then you know, and one of the things that one of them is going to come on and and talk about is how they, you know, started homesteading and took that homestead and made it into a revenue stream.

00:11:05.97
Keith
Exactly. Yes.

00:11:19.51
Buddy
A couple of them actually are going to talk about this and there's different techniques that

00:11:23.00
Keith
That's what we're trying to do. And I, and And we don't know how. that We're just starting. You know, last year, the last two years here and in our garden, we're figuring out the garden, figuring out the soil, figuring out the compost, figuring out what grows and what doesn't and what what mistakes and and all that. and And we're putting all that to use. We'll talk about that in a minute. we but We're putting all that, you know, ah that information into what's coming up in spring. Because our goal is to make money from the garden, not just the bees and the homestead, but but from the garden, you know.

00:11:54.84
Buddy
Well, yeah, and and in the homesteading world, you're, you know, and it's something that I'd like to talk, you know, about, you know, with you. And and since you've been doing it, you know, you have lessons learned for people out there. And this is another episode for us. But there's lessons learned that you have that people who are thinking about homesteading, you know,

00:12:14.52
Buddy
they they see a YouTuber out there that homesteads and and see how easy it is. And usually, you know, maybe it's me, but most of you know, there's some younger folks and they're they're wearing less clothing out there in the snow than they should.

00:12:30.68
Keith
Yeah.

00:12:30.74
Buddy
And they're making, they're glamorizing homestead. and And you know, as well as I do that it's hard. And so total, total.

00:12:38.14
Keith
We'll talk about that when we do, when we have our homesteading episodes I'll, I'll put the S at the end of that, but I will just preface, you know, them by saying there are a lot of people, lot of homesteaders that are on YouTube that totally glamorize the homesteading thing.

00:12:39.42
Buddy
Yeah.

00:12:43.49
Buddy
Yeah.

00:12:54.43
Keith
And you need to look a little closer at some of them because You may be doing yourself an injustice by thinking that is the way it is, and it is not. Those people have money, and they are they and their job is making YouTube videos now.

00:13:05.27
Buddy
Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:13:09.97
Keith
they have They've got the money to buy the tractors and and the and and anything they need. That is not how it's like in real life, man. In real life, you have to budget every single dollar. You have to say to yourself, do I need to buy ah chicken feed this week, or do I need to buy something for the bees? Do I need to buy something for... You know, the burrs, do I need to buy so buying something for the garden? Because you can't buy it all at the same time. Tractor? Hell no.

00:13:35.27
Keith
Tractor's not going to happen.

00:13:35.69
Buddy
Oh, is it? Yeah, it's a choice. I mean, do do i I've got, you know, X amount of dollars extra this month. Do I buy this or do I buy this?

00:13:42.78
Keith
Right, right.

00:13:44.08
Buddy
You know, i can't buy both. And, and you hit it right on the nose there. There's people out there who are retired and I retired millionaires, sports stars,

00:13:50.33
Keith
A lot of people out there. And you watch your videos and they got they got three or four. Yeah, absolutely. They got three or four side-by-sides. And those side-by-sides are $15,000, $20,000 a piece. Yeah. Yeah.

00:14:00.38
Buddy
Yeah, sports stars, wives are out there, you know, and it's all glamorized.

00:14:04.02
Keith
yep

00:14:04.94
Buddy
But yeah, like you said, it's another show. But, you know, getting getting back into, you know, what we want to talk about today is now's the time of year

00:14:12.92
Keith
yeah

00:14:14.78
Buddy
that You should be planning. And and most most people out there, they do one garden a year. They do a summer garden. And it's just extra, you know, it's just an extra food source for them. It's really not replacing anything. They're still going to go out and buy, you know, 90% of the food from from the grocery store.

00:14:34.10
Buddy
It's more of kind of like what I'm doing now. It's like, you know, I like BLTs. I love the taste of a tomato that's grown, homegrown. And there's some specific ones I like.

00:14:43.34
Keith
Mm-mm-mm, me too. Mm.

00:14:45.82
Buddy
And it just taste they taste better than once you get in the stores.

00:14:48.52
Keith
better, man. I got to a couple of tomatoes. Rhonda picked them up just on the way home the other day from the store because we didn't have any. They don't taste anything like the ones that came out of the garden. Nothing. Not even close to the ones we took out of the garden.

00:15:00.22
Buddy
Yeah. Yes, ah definitely. And, you know, that there's just a lot more nutrition in there. There's a lot more of, you know, just tastes better. there It's just a better product. But, you know, what percentage do I actually produce, you know, now, even, you know, back when I was really into, you know, the market garden scene, you know, what was the percentage of food that I actually produced? It it was very low.

00:15:27.29
Buddy
You know, even when I was, you know, taking stuff to the farmer's market and had a backyard full of and ah and another garden in addition to that, producing a lot of stuff, you know, I just really didn't produce a lot, you know.

00:15:40.22
Buddy
um

00:15:41.21
Keith
Are you ever thinking about getting back into your family business of actually doing crops like by fields or just gardening?

00:15:47.06
Buddy
Yeah, I would like to. um it's one of those things where I, you know, I've got land, I, you know, I've got some plans out there. It's just, I'm kind of moved away from the land, you know, it's 30 minute drive one way.

00:16:01.10
Buddy
So it's an hour round trip and it's just, you know, sell it, keep it. What, you know, what do I need to do?

00:16:09.21
Keith
If I was you 30 minutes away, if I was you, I'd be putting bees on it right now and start getting them established. You don't need to be ah on your bees every day. ah you see your You see your bees once or twice every once every once.

00:16:16.47
Buddy
Yeah, there's,

00:16:20.57
Keith
I'm sorry. Once every one to two weeks. You're seeing your bees two to three times a month.

00:16:26.26
Buddy
Yeah, and I looked into that, but we we have an elementary school right next door.

00:16:26.62
Keith
you don't You don't want to do it earlier more than that, you know?

00:16:32.00
Buddy
So there's a problem with that. so

00:16:34.55
Keith
Not necessarily.

00:16:34.68
Buddy
um

00:16:35.59
Keith
That's not, that's not, there's a, are there some kind of regulations in your area or, oh, are you worried about the kids actually getting into the bees?

00:16:35.86
Buddy
and

00:16:39.99
Buddy
Well, there's not, but I can see it now.

00:16:44.54
Buddy
Yeah.

00:16:45.78
Keith
That would be a problem.

00:16:46.23
Buddy
none Are the bees getting into the playground you know kind of thing? We've had problems in the past with just – There's been within a couple miles of us, there's been beehives, actually within about a quarter mile, there was a couple of hives and we we got some strays and it's but it's been a problem in the past, but but yeah, to answer your question, I'd like to, just a matter planning.

00:17:06.75
Keith
Hmm. Hmm. Okay.

00:17:11.90
Buddy
I got a lot of other stuff going on right now, but now's the time to, I can't do any, none.

00:17:14.74
Keith
You can't do a whole lot of shooting on that property either, can you? Yeah. That's pretty close to a school. That'd be a bad thing.

00:17:21.88
Buddy
Yeah, and it's inside city limits. I mean, yeah, I could do it, but it wouldn't take long for somebody to come out there.

00:17:24.06
Keith
Right. i It wouldn't be like, exactly.

00:17:28.89
Buddy
Yeah.

00:17:29.30
Keith
Knock on the door.

00:17:30.61
Buddy
Yeah, so.

00:17:32.90
Keith
I sidetracked you. Go ahead.

00:17:34.39
Buddy
No, that's fine. um in it So, yeah, it's something I need to do, and it's as a prepper, you know, or a preparedness person, you know, i need to really dive into it. But I'm working and another location now to to get more to grow. and starting to get back into it.

00:17:54.89
Keith
Cool.

00:17:55.61
Buddy
So yeah, it's just, it's, you know, it's kind of hypocritical for me.

00:17:59.93
Keith
I know you've got the skills.

00:18:00.37
Buddy
just

00:18:01.17
Keith
That's why I was just wondering.

00:18:02.61
Buddy
Yeah, I got the skills, but it's resources right now.

00:18:07.83
Keith
I mean, you you told me at one time you were actually growing hatch peppers for a restaurant for for so right for a head chef or something.

00:18:15.35
Buddy
Well, it was, It was, now had and I'm having a buddy moment here.

00:18:22.42
Keith
Well, you said it was somebody who, a chef or a cook or somebody that you that you were growing them for, and you had a lot of them, too. You had a lot of ah plants.

00:18:30.23
Buddy
Yeah, it was Fresno peppers for the chef because he had ah a recipe for, he he had a little chicken shack kind of thing where he did chicken sandwiches, you know chicken wings, do and he had this recipe and he used Fresno peppers

00:18:32.34
Keith
Fresnos, yeah.

00:18:38.95
Keith
Mm-hmm.

00:18:46.65
Buddy
And he just, he was importing them all from California and is like, hey, his his sous chef was was asking me, hey, can you grow this stuff?

00:18:49.83
Keith
Ooh. Ooh.

00:18:54.57
Buddy
And I was like, give me some seeds. So I was growing on my, matter of fact, I'm doing some hydroponical right now on the countertop just to see if I can do it again. But yeah, one at one time I had, man, it was over 200, 260, I believe,

00:19:09.78
Keith
Wow ah Wow Because you got to produce them earlier a lot earlier

00:19:10.90
Buddy
starts At this time of year, I had them in ah in my garage with a heater inside a grow tent doing some things. Yeah, yeah. so I was going to put them in, I guess they're like 10-gallon tubs.

00:19:27.90
Buddy
And each plant was going in a 10-gallon tub in my backyard. And I had...

00:19:32.85
Keith
Holy shit.

00:19:34.81
Buddy
I had, I think 25 of them plus a bunch of grow. There's these grow bags that are five and 10 gallon, 50, you can get them up to 25 gallons. And, uh, so I used, there was 20, 20 of the tubs.

00:19:48.44
Buddy
And then I had another 20, 25, uh, the grow bags and I was doing pep, different types of peppers and some tomatoes in them just for, uh, you know, for the business and for, you know, its going to, uh, I kind of got into a neat, a niche with it and with,

00:19:57.28
Keith
Mm-hmm.

00:20:05.05
Buddy
with the farmer's market. And so I was selling a lot of, you know, everybody was taking, trying to take everything there to sell it, which is a technique, but I figured, okay, nobody's doing this. I'm going to do this. And so I became the pepper guy.

00:20:19.64
Buddy
So, you know, I have more experience with peppers than, than tomatoes, even though I do like tomatoes. So, but yeah, it, Going back to the original thing here, before we get too far down to

00:20:31.81
Keith
10 things.

00:20:33.34
Buddy
tint out goes too far down the rabbit hole here, there's 10 things that you need to be thinking about at this point. you know Whether you're a spring gardener and a summer gardener, which is awesome. You should be actually gardening, you and you can with the right techniques, all four seasons.

00:20:49.72
Buddy
Or, you know, this is I'm getting everything set up now for my summer garden. So there's 10 top there. I broke it down to 10 things you need to start thinking about right now and planning, you know, for to get that garden going. So number one is you got to set some goals. You know, you got to figure out, you know, what I need. What do I want to grow this year?

00:21:13.00
Buddy
OK, that's the very first thing. You know, am I using existing beds? Am I starting out from scratch? Am I expanding beds? What am I doing? So, you know, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Or you you're, what they say that? If you fail to plan, your plan will fail.

00:21:31.35
Buddy
So you got to think in those, along those lines where you don't have a plan.

00:21:36.02
Keith
Yeah, it's it's ah it's a plan of ah failing to plan is planning to fail.

00:21:40.24
Buddy
Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you don't come in and with a plan, you don't know what it is. And I've done this. I mean, if, if anybody has failed, you know, and learn from their mistakes, it's me.

00:21:52.60
Buddy
You, you can't just wake up one day on ah a nice day and you see it all the time. It's a nice, it's one of the first nice warm days you get and you go to Home Depot and it's just full of people buying plants. Oh, you know, I got two days of nice weather. I'm going go out and plant some plants. Well,

00:22:11.06
Buddy
lot of them end up dying because they didn't look at their frost calendars. So, you know, one of the things you need to do is find out when is your last frost? You know, do my, the plants I want to plant, are they frost resistant or do I need to wait to plant them after the frost?

00:22:28.50
Buddy
Am I planting seeds? Am I going to plant transplants? Do I, am I going to start the transplants in my house on a countertop or, you know, in the garage or in a spare room under lights, you know, you got a backwards plan your garden from that. So there's just a lot of things that need to be done.

00:22:48.44
Buddy
As far as, you know,

00:22:49.66
Keith
So that's all part of goal setting?

00:22:52.70
Buddy
yeah, goal setting, you need to, you need to say, okay, my garden, the last frost date is this. Okay. So I need a backwards plan from now until then and do all the things.

00:23:05.53
Buddy
to get that plant, you know that that garden or that planting time set. By rule, i used to have relatives that they they swore by, you you can't plant anything until after Easter. You can't plant anything until after Easter.

00:23:20.12
Buddy
And that's a good rule of thumb to go by. Some years you can plant before Easter.

00:23:23.74
Keith
General, yeah.

00:23:25.08
Buddy
Yeah. Some years you can plant before Easter and be fine. Other years, uh, usually when I did it, it stuck me in the ass. So, um, by rule of thumb, at least in zone seven, seven, a seven, B, you know, wait till after Easter.

00:23:38.71
Buddy
Um, not a hard, fast rule, but something to go by. So, you know, used to, if I use that as uh, or I go and actually look up my last frost date projected frost date, which is only an average of what, uh,

00:23:42.94
Keith
Mm-hmm.

00:23:54.78
Buddy
what it had you know the The time and date every year. So it's an average of time. It's not, you know oh, well, I'm i'm fine. it's The last frost date is April 21st.

00:24:05.75
Buddy
you know So I can go out there to the 22nd and put stuff in. you know I've been stuck in the ass with that too. so you just gotta It's a gamble like anything else. you you know I think we all know that.

00:24:15.48
Keith
Yeah, the last frost date for us is April 10th through April 15th. And last year, we got up we got our last frost on April 20th. So had we done the 10th or 11th or 12th, we would have been screwed.

00:24:24.87
Buddy
Yeah.

00:24:28.98
Buddy
Yeah. And then, okay, so what if I do plant it?

00:24:30.78
Keith
Got to watch that weather.

00:24:32.54
Buddy
and And the frost comes in. Well, there's things you can do, like throw blankets over it. You know, some people...

00:24:39.34
Keith
There's an old guy that I watch on YouTube, an old farmer. And when I mean farmer, I mean farmer. This guy's the real deal. And he's like in his 70s. And he's got a great big giant place on play. think it's in, I want to say, Tennessee or maybe Oklahoma.

00:24:51.85
Keith
But he was saying that when something like that happens to his crops and the frost comes in, they run out there early in the morning before the sun comes up. It could be light. But before the sun rises up over the horizon, it's and they spray them all down with water.

00:25:05.62
Buddy
Yes.

00:25:05.81
Keith
And he says that you will save them by getting the frost off the plants before the sun hits them.

00:25:10.94
Buddy
Yeah, I was going to touch on that. Thanks for stealing my thunder. No, no, no, it's a good, no, it's a, it's a good technique.

00:25:14.30
Keith
Sorry.

00:25:18.17
Buddy
I went out there and was doing that. and the girlfriend's like, what are you doing? You're going to kill him. And I was like, just, you know, she was throwing blankets over stuff and I was spraying stuff with water. So it's a technique.

00:25:29.50
Keith
I never would have thought of doing that. I never would have, he said that yeah it's the... It's something that has to do with the when the sun melts the frost, that's when it kills them.

00:25:39.26
Buddy
Yeah, and and you're actually insulating the the foliage with the ice, believe it or not. So, yeah, it's kind of crazy, man.

00:25:46.72
Keith
Hmm. Interesting.

00:25:49.58
Buddy
It it it defies logic, but it works. Now, as soon as I say that and somebody goes and does it, they're going to be like, buddy, you said I could do this.

00:25:57.08
Keith
to blame you.

00:25:58.22
Buddy
and you

00:25:58.62
Keith
That fucking buddy. Some farmer he is.

00:26:00.90
Buddy
Don't listen to buddy.

00:26:01.12
Keith
Yeah.

00:26:01.70
Buddy
But, yeah, it give it a try.

00:26:03.13
Keith
some farmer he is

00:26:05.08
Buddy
Give it a try, you know. Throw blankets on some. you know, throw the water on the other and see what happens. But, you know, I guess the first thing you need to, to do is, is set your goals and we'll go, you know, we'll move on to number two from here, but set goals and backwards plan, you know, find out what you want. What's your ultimate goal. I want the best, uh, Rose garden or the best, you know, uh, which we're, we're going to do this year. We're going to Rose garden. I might put some on a video and stuff.

00:26:33.84
Buddy
Um, just i i've never done a rose garden and i've had rose bushes in the past and and they do well where i'm at um so we're gonna try it so but you know you figure out what you want and then you know how am i gonna get there and when am i gonna get there so backwards plan so all right so number two you gotta make plans you gotta put stuff on paper you know

00:26:50.48
Keith
All right. Reign it in. Number two.

00:26:59.26
Buddy
If you put stuff on paper, kind like we were talking about earlier with my, you know, regimented daily routine with the battle rhythm and stuff, you put stuff on paper, you know, it's more likely to happen. So, you know, go buy a pad, you know, couple dollars at, you know, the office supply store, Walmart, wherever it may be.

00:27:18.84
Buddy
and graph out, you know, what you want to plant. And depending on who you watch on YouTube, you can plant in rows or you can, you know, gorilla plant it. You can crowd stuff out.

00:27:32.38
Buddy
um You have to have space for everything, depending on whatever technique you use, put it on paper and see what happens. I watched a lady recently on accident, you know, But she was making a lot of sense. of she She plants a lot of stuff in raised beds and containers, and she crowds it.

00:27:55.03
Buddy
And it defies logic for, you know, people like, oh, you got to, you know, if you read the the actual package of seeds, it says, okay, you got to plant this, you know, two, three inches apart from the other plant. And it's got to be, you know, there's got to be in rows or something like that, you know, whatever it may be. She just sprinkles stuff in there.

00:28:15.03
Buddy
I believe i call it gorilla planting. And she, she has a method to her madness. She's just not just throwing seeds in there, you know, willy nilly, but you know, the green leafy stuff are on the edge of her containers.

00:28:27.93
Buddy
She has the root plants next to the green leafy stuff. And then, you know, your taller, you know, maybe tomatoes, peppers, your taller plants that climb in the center.

00:28:39.67
Buddy
And so it's kind of appealing to the eye as well, but also it, it's in, you know, it produces well. Now, the other thing,

00:28:45.85
Keith
And there's lots of different ways of doing it. That's not a hard set rule. There's tons of different ways of planning your your garden.

00:28:49.27
Buddy
no and like you were saying earlier, you have, you know, trial and error. And one of the things, you know, she did, you know, talk about was companion planning. And that's something that, you know, you need a when you're doing something like that, especially if you're crowding stuff out, you need to look at companion planning.

00:29:10.80
Buddy
There's certain plants that don't work well with others. There's certain plants that thrive when something else is is next to it. For instance, planting onions, ah plant onions or actually my favorite thing is with my tomato plants, I'll plant some bait Italian basil with them.

00:29:29.24
Buddy
Those two work great together. And you're your tomatoes will take a different taste with the basil planted next to it. I also throw garlic or onions in with it as well.

00:29:40.34
Buddy
ah along the outside and you know some plants put off extra nitrogen that other plants need so you know i don't want to get too far in the weeds

00:29:48.06
Keith
Our basil exploded next to the tomato plants. they were It was unbelievable how they grew.

00:29:51.90
Buddy
yeah i've had instances where my basil grew taller than the tomato plants and it's like you know hey you know whatever so maybe the you know tomato plants are good for the basil plants who knows but um

00:29:59.00
Keith
Wow.

00:30:07.86
Buddy
you know, figure out what's good with stuff like, and Jeremy touched on it as well about, he learned a lesson and you might've said it too, where you had some hot belt, uh, banana peppers.

00:30:19.38
Buddy
You know, you, if you plant your banana peppers too close to your, you know jalapenos or your, your, uh, hotter peppers, you know, you'll get those banana peppers to have a little heat to them as well.

00:30:30.81
Buddy
So you might want to spread those out and that's,

00:30:32.74
Keith
That's right. And the bees will do that. the The honeybees are, when they go out, and it's really quick, when honeybees go out and forage for pollen, okay, and that's when they do their pollinating your plants. They go from plant to plant. One thing to remember about that is that bees, honeybees, they only collect the same colored pollen at a time.

00:30:56.09
Keith
So they'll go back and they'll they'll get it all off their body. They'll The other bees will take it off their body. Then they'll head back out and they'll get more pollen. When they get like a whitish color, they'll only get the whitish color pollen. They get the yellow, the yellow, brown, the green, the black, all different types of pollen out there. So your pepper plants all have the same color po poll ah pollen. So they will pollinate all of your pepper plants if they're right near each other.

00:31:20.44
Keith
And then you're going to start cross pollinating.

00:31:20.70
Buddy
Yeah. And that's, that's a very good point. You know, yeah nature's out there doing a lot of stuff that, that needs to happen.

00:31:32.43
Buddy
You know, I've heard of people going out and shaking certain plants, you know, because they, well, in Oklahoma, we don't have to shake them because the damn wind blows so much.

00:31:33.40
Keith
Oh, yeah.

00:31:36.50
Keith
Yeah, I heard about that, too. Yeah, like a like a wind de effect.

00:31:43.03
Buddy
It's going to do it for us. And a lot of times we don't have to worry about the bees because the wind's going to do it for us with a lot of things, but you know, the pollination thing, uh, kind of getting off in the, in the weeds, so to speak, uh, with this, but yeah, the, that's part of your planning as well.

00:31:58.33
Buddy
You just, you want to watch where you plant stuff, you know, do I have nature working with me or against me kind of thing and put that into your plan. But, you know, the bee, the bee, uh, bees are so beneficial and, uh, and, in butterflies as well for your, um, for your garden.

00:32:18.34
Buddy
So, that's That's a good point. So, all right.

00:32:22.24
Keith
Mm-hmm.

00:32:24.08
Buddy
I'm going dive into number three now. So you've got a plan. You put it on paper. You got some goals. And now what's next? Okay. So you should, i'm going to say you should have already started getting those seed catalogs that we've talked about. And I bet you, on your coffee table at your house, Keith, you've got a stack of them right now. Cause I know I do.

00:32:51.25
Keith
They're about a foot high.

00:32:51.46
Buddy
And yeah. So I'm getting all of these, you know, seed catalogs and I'm going through and saying, you know, wow, I want to do this this year. I want to do this.

00:32:59.99
Keith
And they're free. You just go online and get them.

00:33:01.37
Buddy
They're free. Yeah. Cause they know they're going to, they know they're going to sell. And value there's a lot of information in those. they'll especially like uh johnny seeds and and i think baker creek does a real real good job about they'll have a little educational things in there uh especially if you go online they have all kinds of classes you can take and stuff for sources but you know now's the time where you start ordering seed and uh or going to the store and finding it but you know, with the seed catalogs, they're just, it's a wealth of information. a lot of those seeds, you know, or, or, uh, heirloom seeds, which, you know, you can save the seed from the, the actual, you know, fruit of the plant for the next year, and do it for years. You can keep those seeds stored properly and keep them for years and keep, keep those things going for years and years and years. Now the non, uh, Some of the GMO stuff and the non-heirloom stuff, you can't do that. You might get a ah couple years out of, you know, planting out of them, and and then the seeds are no good. So keep that in mind.

00:34:11.61
Buddy
But, you know, now's the time you've got your plan together. Get those seeds, you know, get out there and figure out what you want. start acquiring those seeds. If you are in an area that there's a lot of gardening going on and or farming, they have seed swaps that, you know, if you get on the right Facebook pages, they'll have a seed swap, you know, to your local community center.

00:34:33.66
Buddy
A lot of farmers markets that, you know, run from May until, you know, October, October-ish and, you know, like my area, In the wintertime, they do a couple seed swaps.

00:34:45.62
Buddy
And it's a good idea. You know, you got the the farmers, the actual people selling at the farmer's market will bring their seeds and, you know, either sell them or they'll swap them for other people. So.

00:34:55.35
Keith
At the ah one of the sales we have here, it's not ah it's not technically a farmer's market, but it's a market right in downtown where everybody sets up you know sets up booths and stuff ah every single weekend. There was one that came by on one of the weekends, back of a truck type of thing. It's a farmer who starts who does their own starts like we're doing here in the house. And they had their seedling starters already 12 inches high, ready to go That was fantastic, man. You can go in there, you can get your you can get your peppers, your tomatoes, all this stuff at you know at a month old already, a month or or two old, a month or two old or already, without having to actually do seeding.

00:35:32.25
Keith
ah really good Really good stuff, man.

00:35:32.57
Buddy
You know,

00:35:34.21
Keith
We produce a couple of great plants from them.

00:35:36.79
Buddy
that's an excellent point. ah One year I made, i would say half of the money I made on the farmer's market was early in the season where I was selling plants. I was out there um selling starts that were taller stands.

00:35:52.21
Buddy
They were greener. They just were more healthy than what you could buy. Of course, you know, Lowe's and Home Depot and a lot of the, uh,

00:35:59.06
Keith
Oh, yeah. Way healthier. Yeah.

00:36:00.66
Buddy
A lot of the you know tractors, well, I'm not going to say tract supply, you know the the feed stores and stuff, which they don't take care of their plants.

00:36:06.64
Keith
Yeah. Feed stores. Yeah.

00:36:09.81
Buddy
So if you can find, if you're if you want a certain plant and you know like a Cherokee tomato is big here in Oklahoma, Cherokee purples and their heirloom, I always try to find somebody growing them you know on marketplace that,

00:36:28.41
Buddy
you know, has a greenhouse in their backyard and they're doing the same thing with me because they're just healthier plants. They're what they're better taken care of than in a greenhouse with a kid making minimum wage.

00:36:38.42
Buddy
And then they throw them on the back of a truck, you know, and it's getting frozen in back of truck and they send it to, you know, Lowe's and stick it out there and it gets frosted and dies.

00:36:50.14
Buddy
You know what mean?

00:36:50.64
Keith
Well, the stores, like like Lowe's and the feed stores, one thing that people don't know is that they buy their plants, all of their plants, from a or more than one ah supplier. And here's the thing. Here's the trick. They are guaranteed that at the end of the season, that farmer, whatever, they'll buy them back, the ones they don't sell or the ones that died.

00:37:11.00
Keith
So they don't care. They have nothing to lose. They're like, yeah, give me all of them. I don't care where they come from. don don't get you know Put them out there.

00:37:17.75
Buddy
Great point. And and one of the things I do, and you know call me cheap, but Lowe's in my area, they're just notorious for killing plants. And so even when I had a landscaping company, I would go to Lowe's and usually on Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday mornings, I would go and just stop in, you know, on my way out to a job site and look and see what they got on their markdown rack.

00:37:41.85
Buddy
And so it's like a third of what they've written them off. So it's all profit for them and they're good.

00:37:47.64
Keith
Right, right.

00:37:48.82
Buddy
So they got these racks out there that's, you know, you might get a flat of a, let's say pansies. You might get a flat of pansies for $2, maybe $5.

00:37:59.82
Buddy
And it normally would cost you.

00:38:00.34
Keith
Right, 75, 80% off.

00:38:02.42
Buddy
Yeah. And so, you know, you throw a little miracle grow on them, water them a little bit, you know, take, put them under, i but used to put them under a lamp in ah a grow tent for a couple days.

00:38:13.34
Buddy
you know, throw some nitrogen on them, get them back to where they're growing and then go out there and use them for customers. You know, it was too easy. I mean, the, and the success rate for those is really high.

00:38:25.08
Buddy
And then I guaranteed my work to where, you know, if something died and they just have to call me up and I replace it. So, you know, so, uh, that's another technique you can use, man.

00:38:30.64
Keith
Exactly. Right.

00:38:34.42
Buddy
You, you're, ah if you're like me and, and, you know, kind of thrifty, I won't say I'm cheap, but I'm thrifty. Um, you know, you, you look at things like that, you know, you can learn how to revive those plants. It's like rescuing a dog in my mind, you know?

00:38:51.54
Buddy
So, okay. Uh, let's see, let's go to number four. Now, um, you've got your seeds, you figure out what you want to buy, you get in the catalogs, you're, you're going through everything and ordering your seeds.

00:39:04.50
Buddy
You're going to the mailbox every day looking for those seeds to come in. Now they're coming in So, um, You know, you've got that, you got the start of the battle started, right? Well, what other things can you start ordering at this point, you know, besides just seeds? Well, what about onion sets?

00:39:22.52
Buddy
What about potatoes? You know, these are more cool. You can plant these in cooler atmospheres and it takes longer from the grow anyhow. So, um, start getting your onion sets out.

00:39:34.07
Buddy
I just went to Tractor Supply earlier, buy some dog food, and they got the onion sets already in my area. You know, they're selling them right now. So this weekend, I will definitely pick some up and put them in, in the ground because it's time to plant the onions.

00:39:47.61
Buddy
And there's, you know, potatoes out there that you can start planting now. Now they might not take off and and do a lot until the ground gets to a certain temperature for their, you know, at a certain temperature.

00:40:01.34
Keith
Well, these are these are root ah vegetables, and they they are perfectly safe under the soil.

00:40:03.70
Buddy
group Yes.

00:40:06.34
Keith
Just sitting down there, a foot, six inches a foot, whatever it is you're planting them, perfectly safe. And when the time comes when nature ends its frost and and it starts warming up and the sun comes out, boom, they just pop right out of the dirt.

00:40:19.00
Buddy
And again, man, you you want, like, I like radishes. So when do you plant radishes? Well, you know, in those plant books that we get, the the catalogs or ah at the store at the back of the seed.

00:40:32.92
Buddy
um your back to your seeds will tell you when to plant them in, in what zone. If not, you can Google it. You know, Google's a great, you know, just a really awesome tool for you. But, you know, now's the time to start doing a lot of that stuff, depending on your zone. You know, a couple guys, you know, that we know down in Florida there, they can do all year around do, so do things.

00:40:57.06
Keith
Right, right.

00:40:58.42
Buddy
People up in South or North Dakota, South Dakota, Houston, Houston,

00:40:58.97
Keith
Yeah, some of the folks in the south, like in ah southern florida and Florida and all over Florida, actually, and, you know, in California, it's another place where it's very temperate and they can grow all kinds of stuff all year round.

00:41:09.85
Buddy
So, yeah, and a part of your planning is know what zone you're in. If you don't know what zone you're in, you need to find out real quick because it it's ah it's something that's very vital to you. It's as vital as that last frost date. You know, you got to know your zone.

00:41:24.25
Buddy
ah So, but yeah, look look at, you know, your your seeds, your onion sets, and then... what do I want in my garden and when do I need to cure, you know, go out and grab stuff?

00:41:36.15
Buddy
if If you're throwing a seed in the ground, that's, you know, maybe a lettuce, you know, you can do some lettuces now, but what if you're doing something like corn, you can do some corn now actually.

00:41:45.50
Keith
Yeah, they don't have the the onions or the potato starters out yet in my area.

00:41:50.14
Buddy
Yeah.

00:41:50.22
Keith
They'll they'll probably come out, so I think, probably like end of February when they start loading up.

00:41:55.06
Buddy
Yeah. You'll see them within the month for sure.

00:41:57.56
Keith
Yep.

00:41:58.52
Buddy
But, and and a lot of times in stores are just starting to get better at it when putting stuff out, you know, at certain times, but you know, a lot of, lot of your box stores, terrible, but I digress.

00:42:10.78
Buddy
So now, you know, it's all about planning. Okay. and it's all about backward planning. um Also there's, you know, skipping ahead a little bit to five and six, you need to,

00:42:25.14
Buddy
if you're going to start seeds and this is, this is kind of hard. It's a, there's some math involved in it, but, um, and sometimes I have to take off my boots to count past 10, but I have to, if I'm starting seasons indoors, you know, when's the frost date, when's, when do I usually plant these, you know, how long is it going to take for the seed to germinate? How long is it going to take to get a stand, you know, two, two inch stand for a pepper plant and pass the, um,

00:42:55.16
Buddy
that last frost date so I can take it outside and plant it in the ground. So, you know, is it time now to do that? Well, I know it is for me because I've done it and I've, I've had success at this and I've failed miserably at this.

00:43:10.39
Buddy
So, you know, learning from my mistakes, like we've talked about, but you know, now's time for a lot, at least in my area, for a lot of people, and I i think you're probably doing it already to, if you're going to do any growing inside with lamps,

00:43:14.35
Keith
Yep.

00:43:25.30
Buddy
or, you know, the heat heat mats and lamps and stuff like that to start plants indoors. It's time now. some In some cases, you're behind the the curve. So, you know, start looking at that. And you can get on YouTube and a lot of good videos out there on it. But if if I could give you any advice, if you're going to start any plants, you know, under your your counter or on your counter under some, you know, countertop lamps or you know, in a spare room or whatever, you you need a heat pad underneath those starts.

00:43:59.58
Buddy
You need good soil. I would add a little bit of vermicompost to it, a little bit of worm worm poop. and And about with your with your soil and your vermicompost, do about at least 70, 30, you know, soil to vermicompost, soil being the most at 70.

00:44:20.38
Buddy
And then water, you know, every few days and don't overwater because then you're going to get bugs and it's going to cause a whole, it's going to create a whole problem for you. You know, just wet the soil a little bit.

00:44:34.94
Buddy
Don't soak it. And then...

00:44:36.43
Keith
Yeah, we we managed to grow a lot of algae know because we overwatered our seedlings. And we still got seeds. We still got seedlings. But I was scraping algae off the top of the dirt like constantly.

00:44:48.73
Buddy
Yeah, and i I was going to a conference for a week, and so I couldn't trust my daughters to to get in there and water, you know, like I would. You know, I taught them how to do it, and I think they actually overwatered. I watered heavy before I left, overwatered, and they overwatered a little bit. And I came back, and I had over 200-something plants just go down the go down tubes. I mean, they were eaten up by bugs.

00:45:17.50
Buddy
i I blame myself for, I actually brought in, and there's something called overwintering. So I was going overwinter my best, uh, jalapeno plant just to try it cause I've never done it.

00:45:30.94
Buddy
And so I didn't do it right. And I brought in some bugs that thrived in, in a ah indoor environment that was, you know, totally climate controlled and with heat over the winter. And they just ate the shit out of all my, uh, within a week.

00:45:47.76
Buddy
Um, the bugs totally stripped my plants where they're all dead. I'd start from scratch. I'd actually go in and scrub the whole environment in there to kill all the eggs and stuff out of it, or I would, it would happen again.

00:45:59.98
Buddy
So terrible.

00:46:01.60
Keith
That's that's good. in That's bad.

00:46:03.29
Buddy
Yeah. But there was, ah you know, learn from my mistakes, learn from buddy's mistakes. So, but you know, now's the time to start your indoor starts research, what you want, go out there and figure it out, do some backward planning. get the math done and and start them out.

00:46:20.76
Buddy
All right. So, ah you know, six, I would say, you know, research your local nurseries. There's people out there that want to do fruit trees. They want to do pecan trees. They want to, you know, this is the year I'm going to do some trees. I'm going to, you know, start a small orchard or something.

00:46:38.90
Buddy
Well, you know, am i am I going to tractor supply and buying one? Or am I going to a local nursery out there? you know, that's what I would do if I was going to buy it, spend extra money, go to a nursery to get a healthier plant or help their tree.

00:46:53.98
Buddy
But now's a time to research, you know, nurseries, research, you know, who who's selling stuff out there right now. And when are they, you know, that because they have sales, they they do grand openings, you know, this season, you know, ah sales around Mother's Day, they there's always sales out there, Easter,

00:47:14.42
Buddy
you know, things like of this nature. So get out there and research and just go, if you have the time, go talk to the actual growers and, you know, they'll, they'll help you out. In a lot of instances, they're more than happy to help you out. So just get educated on, you know, where your stuff's coming from. All right. So and we'll go to seven. Now you're ordering your garden structures. Okay.

00:47:39.13
Buddy
You know, this year I'm going to expand my raised beds. and I'm gonna do those metal metal raised beds and I'm gonna do a three by it eight or three by nine.

00:47:52.57
Buddy
And I'm gonna do three more. So do you wait to order those or get them get em ordered now? you know Well, I would order them now and start getting them put up and start slowly putting, you know, your dirt and start prepping those beds because you're going to wake up one day and do like everybody does. It's a warm day out there. It's going to be warm all weekend. Great planning day. I'm going to go buy these raised beds and I'm going to go get some dirt and going to have a whole truckload of shit and work my ass off on a Saturday afternoon and do all these things. And then I'm going throw plants in there and then your plant's going to die because,

00:48:30.42
Buddy
of things, the reasons. Maybe they don't. My experience is, you know, when you prep a bed correctly, you know, with the compost and the other things that need to be involved, you do it slowly.

00:48:44.18
Buddy
If you want better success with your soil science and your your soil to get the things in the soils that live and and thrive and make the soil more healthy, you do it over time.

00:48:55.64
Buddy
So that's something you need to start, you know, What are your structures? You might build beds from, you know, with wood. You might, you know, collect things around your farm or from other people on a marketplace to to make beds out of, get creative. I mean, I've seen tires. I've seen, you know, feed buckets from farmers. I've seen people with very ornate beds. They spend, multiple you know, multiple hundreds of dollars on to make, you know, make a spectacle out of it and stuff. But, you know, take your time and do it right. You know, get that, build the structure and put the soil in.

00:49:38.39
Buddy
So.

00:49:39.29
Keith
and decide if you really even need a structure. There are a lot of people out there that just do mounding, like mounds, ah rows, ro cro row crops, and things like that. For instance, we did our corn, and in between, we did beans around the corn, and in front, we did um the the flowers. What are they called again? The is it

00:49:59.02
Buddy
Zinnius.

00:50:00.02
Keith
the ones that keep the bugs and stuff away. Yeah.

00:50:02.52
Buddy
Oh, Miracles.

00:50:04.22
Keith
Marigolds. We did all that around the outside and we did all of it just in rows. Like in other words, mounted up rows, long mounted rows. And every bit of it did awesome. We didn't even need a bed structure around it.

00:50:16.38
Keith
You know, now one thing I did do is once I planned out that whole section, I did take my, I've got a gas powered auger, know, that digs holes. And I went through and I dug down like a foot, every single foot, a foot deep.

00:50:25.50
Buddy
Yeah.

00:50:30.23
Keith
So that I was able to mix up all that dirt and and throw in some compost and do all that. Then I went back through, raked it all up, made my rows, mounded them up about three, four inches high and planted the seeds right in top of the, of the mounds. And it really did wonderful. Didn't even need to put wooden beds around it.

00:50:46.36
Buddy
Yeah, and and, you know, it's it's the gardener's choice. There's people that that have to have a linear-type garden with rows, and and everything's got to have its own row in its own place and and things like that. And there's other people that only have so much room, and they just start throwing seeds in it and drill a garden and do do the things. Yeah.

00:51:10.49
Buddy
people who like containers and they're all, you know, dress, right dress. And, and there's, you know, just, you walk into a garden, they're gardening. It looks like something out of a magazine.

00:51:19.99
Keith
Feel like a museum.

00:51:21.24
Buddy
Yeah.

00:51:21.72
Keith
Yeah, exactly. Yep.

00:51:22.81
Buddy
And, and, you know, I'll have to tell all my girlfriend, she's like that. She wants something that's, you know, pleasable to the eye. So when she goes on her back porch, she sees it and it's something, you know, pleasant.

00:51:36.15
Buddy
And which is not me. I'm just throwing shit, you know, left and right. But

00:51:41.38
Keith
Rhonda and I are the same, but we're also opposite. We both are the same in the way that we love a rustic garden stuff, just really just natural and nature and stuff like we have to actually duck under and walk under plants to get to other plants, things like that.

00:51:57.60
Keith
But we are also, we're different in the, in the sense that she is 100% chaos gardening and I'm 100% organized. I like my plants exactly exactly. eight inches apart, whatever it's supposed to be, and organized into squares.

00:52:10.96
Keith
She loves stuff just mixed all over the place. And there's beauty in that. There's beauty in that chaos. and it you know it's It's something to see like a nice row of corn, but then all of a sudden everywhere else there's all these other things just mixed in, like ah chaos, basically.

00:52:25.18
Buddy
Yeah. And who's right? You know, nobody, you know, that, that at the end of the day, it's, you know, you can get growth out of both.

00:52:29.27
Keith
Nobody. Mm-mm.

00:52:34.02
Buddy
It's just your choice. To me, I'm, I'm, ah I don't like the structure. I like, you know, just to throw stuff in there. And so everything's an experiment for me.

00:52:44.46
Buddy
it's It's weird, you know, even,

00:52:47.29
Keith
this may This may sound hippie-ish or whatever, but I really honestly believe this, that when you walk into your space, your garden space, how it makes you feel is very important to how much how your productivity is going to come out.

00:53:00.16
Keith
If you hate your garden, it will not produce.

00:53:00.54
Buddy
Yeah.

00:53:03.80
Buddy
Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, it's, it's a, it's a dealer's, you know, choice when it comes to your garden and the way it looks, there's, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what, you know, the neighbors think about my garden to me, you know, some people, it matters, you know, a hundred percent what the neighbors think. It's, it's how I feel. i I'm, I'm like that too. So. I could care less. I want a functional garden that works, that produces food.

00:53:34.54
Buddy
I'd rather see a um ah tomato that's juicy and huge and brag about it that I grew it than, a you know, ah a container that, you know, is all the same color and in in a perfect row that produces a shit tomato.

00:53:46.20
Keith
Exactly.

00:53:49.93
Buddy
You know what I That's me.

00:53:50.29
Keith
Mm-hmm. We had grass and weeds growing between our wooden beds. And the wooden beds was just all it was all the the extra garbage, trash, wood I was taking off of logs on the mill that was from trees that was know building projects with.

00:54:02.63
Buddy
Yeah.

00:54:03.54
Keith
i I didn't go out and use like you know actual ah you know dimensional lumber from the store to build beds. No, we used whatever we could. And here's the thing. You look on you look online, you see people putting stone or you know gravel, things like that between their beds.

00:54:18.43
Keith
You want to kneel on that? I don't. I want to kneel on some nice soft grass.

00:54:23.19
Buddy
Yeah, yeah. yeah it it

00:54:26.04
Keith
Because if you're a gardener, your gardeners do it on their knees. You're doing it on your knees. I don't care if you have beds or not. You're not, you're not standing up all day.

00:54:33.02
Buddy
Now that's a t-shirt slogan for Topsplunker right there. Gardeners do it on their knees. I like it.

00:54:37.59
Keith
Exactly.

00:54:38.65
Buddy
All right. We're going have to sell some t-shirts now.

00:54:42.79
Keith
ah Moving to number eight.

00:54:43.70
Buddy
All right. All right. Eight. So um something that people that garden in the ground, something that will be helpful for them.

00:54:54.30
Buddy
This is a time of year if you have a tarp, you know, and I've talked about this before. it's time to put a tarp down to kind of smother out the weeds. Also a tarp will protect the soil. If you got bare soil out there blowing in the wind right now, you're kind of wrong.

00:55:10.84
Buddy
As far as you're killing your soil, you're not doing it any help. By covering it, you're covering up, keeping the wind erosion away. You're actually helping, you know, worms and other, you know, of the,

00:55:27.13
Buddy
the little critters that are doing, that do the things you want to do in your garden, in the soil to do their thing. So cover, cover your gardens up. You know, this is the time of year, especially keep, you know, you don't necessarily, if it's going to snow, you know, you could uncover it for a little while because you want that moisture or stuff, but you're going to still get moisture underneath a nice tart.

00:55:48.98
Buddy
So cover them up and put your, um, this is a time of year you want to put some compost on your garden. You know, if you're, whether you're doing it in rows or your raised beds or containers, whatever you're doing, buy a deal of compost and just top dress it. Just don't spend a lot of time. If you want to work it into the soil, do it now.

00:56:09.53
Buddy
It's going to help create a better environment when spring comes because you're, you're introducing that compost to the soil now. You're giving it time, like if it's manure based compost, you're giving that manure time to age.

00:56:23.86
Buddy
Because a lot of times the compost from the compost factories, it's green manure. It's only been there a couple of weeks. They mix it in there and then you go buy a bag of it that comes straight off the truck on a Sunday afternoon or Saturday afternoon, take it and put it in your garden, throw some seeds down and wonder why your seeds aren't growing or your plants.

00:56:42.64
Keith
it's it's it's hot It's chemically hot. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:56:45.21
Buddy
It's too hot with nitrogen.

00:56:46.07
Keith
yeah

00:56:47.10
Buddy
and And when you get down to it, and I've, I've known people who grow, you know, commercially that have ruined their whole start of their season. I mean, they were like, what do we do now? Because they got too hot of compost and they didn't test it before they put it in. And it just, it killed all their plants. they like, what the hell, what did I do wrong? You know? And they have the extension agents come out and go, well, compost is, you know, rated at this on nitrogen, which is basically burning the shit out of your plants. Well, what do I do now?

00:57:17.26
Buddy
Replant, you know?

00:57:18.68
Keith
Yeah, and we're trying something we're trying something a little bit experimental right now, whereas we have ah ah a lot of our garden is covered in in straw. We got straw down for, you know, as opposed to tarps.

00:57:27.92
Buddy
Yeah.

00:57:29.36
Keith
we We were saving some of our tarps. And then we have a most of our beds where our tomatoes and our peppers were. Those were cut at the, at the stem, at at the, at the soil line so that everything under it, all the root systems everything is, is, is turning to compost itself because there's a whole ecosystem inside that dirt.

00:57:48.73
Keith
And we're not experts, but we left it all of that area open because, and we opened the gates. So now all of our chickens and our guineas and our turkeys are in there and they're digging through that and they're, They're mixing it up and they're pooping in it, which is nitrogen.

00:58:01.29
Buddy
Oh, yeah.

00:58:01.49
Keith
they're doing all this stuff. They're making it healthy. Now, are they eating some bugs? Yes. And are they eating some worms? Probably yes, too. But they're they're aerating it.

00:58:09.14
Buddy
But yeah, you're doing the you're doing the right things.

00:58:09.41
Keith
They're moving it around. And it it looks really nice.

00:58:13.21
Buddy
Yeah, you're doing the right things.

00:58:13.34
Keith
Yeah, it looks nice.

00:58:14.81
Buddy
I mean, that's you got to let nature take its course. and And people, you know, can't mess with Mother Nature. and And she will definitely, you know, you're doing the right things, definitely.

00:58:24.62
Keith
We would love to keep the chickens in there you know while while we're growing, but they'll eat the plants.

00:58:25.18
Buddy
Yeah.

00:58:28.52
Keith
That we can't have.

00:58:28.86
Buddy
Yeah, yeah that's that's a lesson I've learned. I spent but couple hundred dollars on some plants, some starts, and and didn't put the fence around it came back the next day, and yeah, the chickens were just smiling, fat and happy over there, laughing.

00:58:45.52
Buddy
and

00:58:45.62
Keith
And it's not even the money, dude. It's the time. you put in you put in You put in a month or more just in trying to get those things up to six inches.

00:58:48.57
Buddy
Yes.

00:58:53.22
Keith
So then you harden them off for a few weeks out in the sun before you put them out there. You finally plant them. You got your mulch all around them. Everything looks beautiful. The next day you come out and they're eating down to like a peg.

00:59:04.02
Buddy
Yeah, all I could think about was fried chicken. I mean, from that point on, it...

00:59:06.16
Keith
ah Well, i'll be I'll be hunting squirrels this year because squirrels did a lot of damage to our corn and our sunflowers, a lot of stuff.

00:59:11.86
Buddy
Ah, yeah. Yeah, we we could do a whole episode on, you know, critters and how to keep out of the garden.

00:59:18.52
Keith
We will.

00:59:19.82
Buddy
I actually had a class on it, a two-day class on it, you know, through the mitigation part of it, and it was pretty cool, you know.

00:59:27.06
Keith
Nice.

00:59:27.93
Buddy
But anyhow, so nine...

00:59:28.98
Keith
So what is number eight?

00:59:30.42
Buddy
Well, eight eight is order are your garden covers. You know, if you tarps, maybe it's straw, maybe it's whatever, you know, but cover the garden and, you know, keep it, if if it's an open garden, if it's an open,

00:59:35.29
Keith
got Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.

00:59:50.23
Buddy
you know, traditional plant in the ground, you know, garden that I do the rows and stuff like that, I guess a traditional garden, go ahead and cover it up. You'll be surprised at the difference it makes with covering it up about this time of year.

01:00:06.39
Buddy
And then nine would was put the compost on it. You know, go out there, even in your containers, throw some compost now. Later on, get some more compost. I like to buy compost and stack it in the in the shop or stack it in the barn and maybe even open it up a little bit and just let it breathe. It easily has a tear in the bag by the time I get it back anyways.

01:00:30.07
Buddy
but I want to age that compost because i don't trust it. You know what i mean? I don't trust it. And then we've got, just had this conversation, but so I'll buy compost, you know, few bags at a time and just always put some back.

01:00:42.68
Buddy
I really love the vermicompost and I'll buy a big bag of it if I don't produce my own. And then just keep it because that stuff is gold to me.

01:00:54.10
Buddy
I love it. It's,

01:00:55.29
Keith
My worms have been working hard. I've been feeding them all for the past months. They're but they're doing great out there. They're in my shop, and I've got them covered with up with ah some of that camouflage netting.

01:01:01.98
Buddy
Yeah, and and the best thing you can do, the best thing you can do,

01:01:07.81
Keith
Go ahead.

01:01:09.38
Buddy
the best thing you can do with that is just, you know, as as they produce it, take it out and throw it in a different part of your garden, you know, somewhere, especially over the wintertime. Now, the chickens will love that because you're going to get some little worms in there and some things.

01:01:19.38
Keith
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

01:01:22.30
Buddy
But, if yeah.

01:01:22.97
Keith
Well, I'm doing the the bucket method where you've got, not bucket, but the I've got bought these, you know, it's a whole system of bins that go up.

01:01:23.14
Buddy
Yeah.

01:01:28.77
Keith
And the bottom bin is your is your is your poop. That's what they call it, their the worm castings. And then I take that and I sift it through and I i dry it out and i' and I've been bringing it in and it's ah we're saving it because it's it's going into all of our seed starts.

01:01:35.29
Buddy
Yeah, yeah it's the it's nature's compost.

01:01:45.31
Keith
And we've got a couple of plants that weren't wasn't doing well we're putting it into that and it's helping them.

01:01:52.51
Buddy
I mean, it's nature's way of building soil.

01:01:53.79
Keith
Absolutely fantastic.

01:01:55.39
Buddy
So...

01:01:55.83
Keith
I never thought that I would be raising worms. I really didn't. But now that I'm doing it, I'm thinking, why wouldn't I? It's it's a great thing for a gardener.

01:02:03.16
Buddy
The benefit of it is is, I mean, it definitely outweighs the trouble you put into it. Now, they're smelly. There's problems that come with it, like, you know, you got your gnats that come out of it. I think they call them army flies or something. You know, it's smelly. It's it's stinky. But, man, when you actually get those castings and and throw it on your garden and you start getting, you'll just see the difference in your garden.

01:02:28.70
Buddy
A lot of people stick them underneath. you know, just a ah bucket of worms underneath their sink in their, in their kitchen, throw, you know, a little bit of leftover lettuce or whatever in there. Some, you know, you don't use it, you know, we've, we've had those classes or podcasts about, you know, do's and don'ts on and we'll have another one. But, you know, just put the right things in there and feed them but a little bit of oatmeal or whatever, every once a while, let them do their thing and, and keep them a little bit moist and man, it just pays off dividends. It's,

01:03:01.39
Buddy
I love them.

01:03:03.35
Keith
Agreed. We'll do, we'll do an episode on it. I think people need to know more about worms.

01:03:06.97
Buddy
yeah. And if you're using worms out there, if if you've, you know, listened to us or you're doing it anyways, man, come on and speak pipe and let us know because come on the show.

01:03:15.96
Keith
yeah Or come on the show, you know?

01:03:18.50
Buddy
And, you know, I would like to say that we're going to, I plan on starting a series or we start a series of, you know, our listener, you know, bringing listeners on periodically and just, we want to hear their stories. You know, first off, why you listen to us and then what's some lessons you've learned. And, you know, if you don't want to come on the show, you can do the speak pipe. If you'd like that or messages just yeah give us some wins, give us some, some losses, even, you know, we want to know,

01:03:48.70
Buddy
you know If we're making a difference out there and you know if there's things you want to know, we we want to definitely be there for you. and you know Let's bring you on the show and talk. you know It's our community. you know it's ah It's not really our community. It's it's all of our community. but we We love to bring people on.

01:04:07.45
Buddy
and That's how I initially came on the show. I was asked, you know hey, on a ah mass call you guys put out, it's like, hey, who wants come on the show? was like, shit, I do. I'll come on. Yeah.

01:04:17.39
Keith
Yeah, and if I remember correctly, you missed the first one, which was which was fine because there was like six people, man, and we couldn't even, or it was so many people we couldn't even barely get a word out.

01:04:20.70
Buddy
uh

01:04:25.27
Buddy
yeah yeah i i said hey i'll just i'll duck out of this one and maybe you do the next one uh it was it was chaotic a little bit so but yeah i mean i'm glad i did and here i am so uh and then number 10 go do the things i mean start your plan right now just go out and do it you know you

01:04:39.00
Keith
Yeah, exactly. Number 10.

01:04:50.62
Buddy
take some time and put that whole plan in action, you know, do something. if If you're totally confused, hit us up, you know, instant messages, you know, we'll put some, you know, some hit us up on Facebook and let us know, you know, we're there to guide you. I've done some consulting for gardening a little bit with some, you know, just people.

01:05:14.78
Buddy
And nothing nothing crazy, but I've done some garden consulting and got a little experience in with it. And and let's let's help you out. you know Our goal is to educate people and make everybody successful. We're not in here to you know set people to failure.

01:05:32.25
Buddy
yeah You're going to have some wins. going to have some losses. we want to hear the wins and losses to help you know help you out to better your success. And and hopefully one day that it's going to really pay off for you.

My Prepper brothers and sisters…

There ya have it. Ten things we should be doing right now to prepare for the best growing season ever. Listen, don’t over complicate this.

Run down to your local nursery, and yes, Walmart counts. That’s where we get our seed starting mix,