QSI Homestead Series 3: Planting Your Edible Garden (May 3, 2024)

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Homestead Series 3: 5/3/24
Planting Your Edible Garden

1:44 Intro to Herb planting in ground
7:55 What & When to Plant
15:35 Irrigation
18:12 Drip System
26:01 Vertical Gardening
34:08 Summary
37:08 Intro to Herb Potting
39:09 Planting Mindset
42:56 How Much Sun Do Herb Pots Need
44;15 Items Needed for Potting Herbs
1:09:39 Potting Your Herbs
1:19:25 Harvesting Leaves
1:28:48 Troubleshooting

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[Music] hi everyone today is Friday May 3rd and this is our third episode of our homesteading series and today’s topic will be on plan ing your Edible Garden um with ingr and container gardens so we have two special presenters today one is Julie and she’s with the DFW quum and we also have Mara with the Ontario and New York Corum so I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to Julie Julie please introduce yourself and tell us why this is your passion and how long you’ve been doing this so I am Julie and I am from the QSI West Texas formerly DFW and gardening is my passion I love growing my own food the flavors are so much better makes all my meals better and they are much healthier vegetables when you grow them without using the pesticides and can be organic so that is how I got started so we’ll get right into the slideshow today we’re going to do an introduction to gardening and this is basically set up for the beginner it’ll hit the highlights the four most important features for starting a garden and it’ll be in at a pace to where a new person can decide whether they want to start small or start large so getting started you need to choose a location if you’re going to start small you may want to pick a flower bed or a pot and if you’re going to go with a fullsize garden you’ll want to till up some ground or maybe use a large planter for apartments and renters there are contractual obligations you have so you may not be able to tear up the yard outside your door but you can utilize pots Tower Gardens and balconies so the basics for Success are sun soil water and weed control and for the sun you need to ensure at least six hours preferably more of sunlight through the day in the garden and you for those in the climates around the equator like Texas here you need to protect from the late afternoon sun because it’s very hot and the little plants can’t take it we’ll go right into vegetables seed packs you can plant from seeds and on the back there’s a whole lot of information but there is way one made major piece of information and that’s the pH ranges that are acceptable to certain varieties and if you don’t set your soil up and to those pH ranges then your plants May grow but your production will be poor so like on the example Peppers some of them start at 5.5 for a PH range and potatoes are 4.5 up to 6.0 so you need to kind of pick a level to adjust your garden to that accommodates those varieties so on the seed package it will depict when to plant generally the months you can actually plant it’ll give you the sunlight requirements it’ll give you days till Harvest so after you plant those seeds you’ll want to mark that dat down in your calendar if you’re new to gardening so you’ll know when your uh produce is ready it’ll also give you the depth to plant the seeds and spacing requirements also pictured in this slide is containers that you’ll use to start your seeds inside just fill them up with a bag of potting soil plant your seeds put them in a sunny window and water them regularly so those pH ranges are important because we need to adjust our soil the com best composition for soil is loone it consists of equal parts of sand silt clay and Rich of humus or organic matter if if you have Clay then you’ll need to stop and add the other three to it and if you have silk like I do you stop and add the other three to that and then blend it up good I recommend soil testing if you send it off to an extension office or a county state or universities they can give you what your soil is good good with and what your soil is deficient with and offer remedies there’s also personal testing devices AA able for purchase at garden centers or online and I do have one of those because I not only test mine at the beginning of the Season I’ll test mine all the way through the season at various times so organically adjusting soils if you need to reduce the acid and raise your pH in your soil you’ll utilize lime it mostly comes in a powder form to reduce pH and raise acid you’ll want to use sulfur and that does come in powder it also comes in uh pellets and disc they were actually disc last time I bought it and don’t forget to add the micronutrients Brian shared a very nice recipe in the homestead series one with us and those are very important for your garden tools for many years before I could afford a tiller I utilized just a shovel to dig up my soil and air rate it I used a rake to smooth it back out out and a hoe to dig my rows and to manage the weeds you may want to consider a wheelbarrow if you’re moving a lot of bags of dirt in to balance your soil it will help your back a whole lot as far as Machinery small tillers are good for turning soil and also for weed control they do come in electric battery and gas and larger tillers for larger Gardens will save you a ton of time you can rent those from equipment rental places or garden centers or you can actually buy one for yourself and we’ll talk later about irrigation and to do a drip system you’ll need scissors box cutters and a screwdriver so what when to plant I plant what I consume and what my grandkids consume in Texas we’re lucky we can grow just about everything here we start with peas and lettuce and those kind of things very early in the season and then we protect them from from frost we’re also very lucky in the fact that we can actually have two gardens a year so we can plant a fall garden and we do get good yields out of that when to plant I did see a message in chat the other day from somebody wishing they had a planning guide well they are free and available one place I go to is almanac.com and there’s a picture of the chart that it’ll give you when you log on to that and put your location in there it is the one with the blue header and it will tell you when to start your plants inside when to move those plants outside when to start your seeds outside and the last state to plant if you prefer a paper copy there is a Farmers Almanac available they’re still out there for sale and local extension offices and universities that deal with um agriculture they also have programs too that will help you in when to plant I like almanac.com it does the snow flake symbol that’ll tell you uh dates based on Frost and it also does the Crescent Moon which will tell you to how to plant or when to plant for the lunar cycle I do plant all my Gardens with the lunar cycle so planting space between plant and Rose as was discussed previously seed packets and plant cards will LIF spacing between plants within the row and between the rows and when you’re changing up varieties like corn is 2 to three feet and you go to beans that’s maybe a foot and a half the row between the corn and the first beans you’re going to want to go the two to three feet and then you can pick up the one and a half after and just always error on the side of the larger number you may lose a little growing space but it’ll give you more room to work the garden and not choke out the the next for rting depth and mounding the back of your seed package will also tell you for for example cucumbers cucumbers require you to Mound up the soil I do about four 4 Ines or five inches and then I follow the planting instructions for how deep to plant it and then there’s weeds weeds take up the most of my time working the garden and along with weeds if you ever need a yard just plant your garden where you want your yard because that grass will come in thick so best ways to handle weeds you can block them using weed floth and mulching 2 to four Ines and other options include hoing and hand pulling I always hand pull around my individual plants out there because I don’t want to disturb the roots and and cause harm to to my plants you can also use a small tiller but I would only till up very small amount just to get the weeds out of there don’t do any deep tilling into your soil so now we’ll look at a short video on planting once your soil is tilled and prepared to go you take your plants that you previously started or bought and you just dig a hole set them in there and put the dirt around them if you’re using cloth you will cut a plus in the cloth like this uh weed cloth and just put it down gently over the plant you can lift the leaves up and they fall into uh into the the plush you put very easy if you’re planting from seed I take the hoe and I just pull and make a little ditch the packet will tell you how deep to plant each seed and uh the spacing between the rows and also the spacing of the seed so I put corn is is 8 to 12 in and I just put the corn in in the gr Groove and just cover it lightly with about an inch of soil if you’re using cloth again as weed break you’ll just put this alongside your row nail it down with some Staples and hold it from the wind so depending on your location I’m very windy here and so I use a lot of anchors and I’ll hand it back over to re Nicole and Jane for any questions I’ll start um with the first one it even though you’ve discussed a little bit what are the best resources to know what to plant and when our given in our given region is it best to start with seedlings or with small plants so soour to purchase no goad go ahead yeah there’s so many different um climates and conditions my my suggestion would be go to your extension offices if your states have them or your countries have them and or go down to the garden center and talk to somebody who’s trained in that um I couldn’t tell you what’s best for Michigan because I grow in Texas I’ve grown in Oklahoma I can help those people out some but the other climates uh you would you would check locally with other gardeners or with your garden center perfect um should we feed our plants nutrients outside of using organic soil and you can feed your yours extra nutrients I’m predominantly organic and so I utilize organic matter a lot very seldom do I have to add any to it I may put some eggshells out there around the tomatoes uh but everything I do I try to be as organic as possible um again your local Garden Center can help you I do know we have fungus issues and a few crazy things for being in droughts we still have fungus it’s it’s quite bizarre but uh there are at the farm and ranch stores at the Garden Centers you can get organic materials and and spray and take care of those things I’ll do one more and then I’ll hand it to Jane what are the best ways to protect your garden against the extreme heat of the Texas summer and we did cover that a little bit um last year we had 122 degrees here in Texas it was one of the best Gardens I had which was really mind-blowing to me I really didn’t expect to have have that kind of yield and that kind of return um everything really thrived I increased my watering now I do use structured water which we’ll talk about further uh in the video or in the presentation and structured water has always allowed me to maintain my yards uh people in you see in the cities they’ll water every other day I water once a week um it just breaks up that water molecule makes it more advantageous for the plants and it really did uh carry my garden last year ni thanks for that Julie I’m just what’s the best way to keep insects and slugs from devouring herbs and vegetables because we do know that young seedlings are perfect for Slugs and snails and all all things creepy crawly so how do we deal with those and so again I’ll have to refer to my structured water and also from homestead series one Tom he talked about electroculture with the copper and if you have a healthy garden and you have the the right energies in it my garden really isn’t bothered by those things that’s great thanks Julie I think some of the others you’re going to uh answer as we go through so I think that’s probably enough questions for now so irrigation there are plants will require 1 to two inches of water per week that is influenced by several factors such as weather did you get rain recently has the wind been strong in a lot of windy days your soil type does your soil drain quickly or does it hold water down below your your growing zone and different plant varieties in hot weather vegetables need even more water increase by 1/2 inch per week for every 10° fahr that the average temperature is above 60° fahr and for those at with the Celsius we did that in air traffic as well that would be 5.55 degrees Celsius and that would be for temperatures at above 15.55 de C irrigation options include hand watering you can do that with either a hose or you can do it with a container utilizing sprinklers irrigation ditches or installing drip systems drip systems can be bought in kits as depicted here on this slide or you can buy them by the IND individual pieces if you don’t want a bunch of leftover pieces I do use the drip depot.com they have fast service and their prices are pretty affordable I do recommend testing your water there are portable devices and testing services available by many of the same entities that test your soil Portables again at Garden Centers and online are very handy to test throughout the season my water typically is around 8 pH sometimes 7.9 but mostly around 8 pH the last couple years with the drought I’ve had readings of 9.5 in the pH so I do go back and supplement my soil through the growing season I also use a structured water unit that I talked about earlier and that is a u a ball Flow Design it does mimic a waterfall and does add the energy in there and as the previous answer to to the question if you’re using Tom’s electroculture don’t add the the structured water to it it’ll be way too much energy for your your plants drip systems can be tailored made you can put them into rais beds plants you can mix them all together you can run row crops in in a on ground Garden they usually utilize compression fittings which are putting the hose into the fitting and when you turn the water on it swells and keeps it from falling off they also have coupling fittings which is what I prefer and it has a way to put the hose on there and then tighten it up with with a a nut either of them work well it’s just whichever you prefer and the fittings come in 90° they come in T’s and Y to assist you in building out your design emitters are what you use on the the tubing to allow the water to drip they come in various sizes such as 3/4 of a gallon an hour one gallon an hour or two gallons an hour I mix and match them depending on which plants in my garden require more or less water and it’s pretty easy to do and once you try you may go back and adjust and take 3/4 off and add a one gallon is just kind of trial and error I do run a single feed to my garden and I use an endcap flush valve and that is really hard to say fast but I put that at the very end and what it does is when you turn your water off your system will drain of water so therefore you have all that air in there if you just seal the very end of it that air will just build up in there and it will affect the emitters and and you won’t be getting the water in into your garden so if you put that piece on there what it does is allow the air to flush out when the water hits it it stops and seals the system so you’re ready to to water the garden effectively and I also use a backflow preventer or two of them sometimes between my hose feed and my drip system to prevent any stagnant water that’s left in the lines being pulled back into house due to pressure so now we’ll watch short video reference irrigation our plants are in the ground and then you your next concern is water you can get a simple water gauge to measure what Mother Nature gives you and then determine how you want to supply the additional water you can use a sprinkler you can hand water them just depends on how how much time and how big your garden is to uh how you want to do the watering piece for row crops you’ll put the emitters and that would be the blue things 8 in apart and run it the entire length of your row this will ensure even watering and make that a whole lot easier it feeds automatically and and works real well for FSH plants like tomatoes you’ll put three emitters together about 3 or 4 Ines apart and I usually Center up the center emitter with the plant so for tomatoes you have four feet required between them so this will be a solid black pipe three emitters by the first one and then three emitters by the second one for super ease you can get a timer available at any discount store and screw that in into your water supply which for most people would be their house outside house water and then I use a structured unit to add my energy into my garden and it is just a ball Flow Design it has a bunch balls uh packed inside of it it screws onto either your water faucet if you’re not using a timer or onto the timer itself and then you run your hose uh and start feeding your system on the other end of it super simple to use increases yields and adds a lot of energy and we’ll go back to r Nicole and Jane for any questions yeah give me just a second to pull it up what are your thoughts on permaculture or no till gardening and any tips and I know that you discussed that prior to doing the irrigation but I saw that one and wanted to get it addressed you’re muted yeah I see both of them out and play when I drive down the road some people till their Garden every year and there are a bunch of people who have gotten away from tilling every year once you get your soil kind of set up I don’t till it every year it does disturb the the stuff under the ground like the earthworms and all that if you over till it it can actually provide harm so that is a direction that a lot of gardeners are moving to no till um I’ll ask one more and then I’ll pass it to Jane if she has anything should you be watering from the bottom plants in a container the containers where saucers or other means of holding water at the bottom so I think I’ll defer to uh Marlo on that she’ll be covering planting in contain coners and uh I’ll let her take care of that one perfect sounds good Jane yeah the what pretty much the questions that I can see at the moment are for containers so that’s why I’ve sort of been going past them but and then there’s a lot of questions in regards to weeds which Julie did address uh in her presentation so I think a lot of the questions that we’ve actually got have been addressed but you know um the one thing I would think that that I would actually question as you’ve got um an irrigation system set up have you actually thought about using an organic liquid fertilizer to go through while you’re watering to actually fertilize as well because I know they are available uh and is that actually an option as well that is an option and um I do have a five and a half acre Vineyard and I do that I do Infuse my um uh organic liquid fertilizer into my drip system and drip it on the vineyard I don’t do it in my garden um just most mostly because of size my Garden’s 16 by 24 and it’s so super easy for me to do it with a just walk down the roads with a container and just uh and fertilize that way with with my fertilizer but those systems are nice for large large scale projects and uh it’s been very beneficial in that Vineyard yeah no AR thank you for that Julie otherwise I think that’s all from me for now creative way to increase yields and limited spaces using structures like walls trellises wire fences canes or panels if you live in the city and you have one of those small lots that we refer to in Texas as postage stamps you can still utilize and and get a whole lot of yields out of a small space by going vertical you’ll need to choose the vegetable vegetables designated as a climbing variety I have seen people tie up other varieties that don’t CL climb but I’m not really into that extra work so I usually choose the ones that do climb examples of those would be peas beans long bin Tomatoes small pumpkins bitter melons and gourds trellises can add Beauty to your garden just as adding flowers like Jasmine Claus and climbing roses do if you’ve ever seen a roses around a Vineyard it’s because they’re used to alert the grower to problems as many diseases typically show up in roses first so plant you a rose out there in the garden you’ll be you’ll be alerted to what’s coming so there are many examples of trellises you can make them out of old tools and just utilize a few cross pieces the second picture is actually made out of old bicycle rims so if you’ve got that old bicycle that you haven’t rode in 20 years take it out clean it up create you a trellis you can buy them in kits and put them together you can use canes and Planters and just utilize some string across the canes and the vines will grab a hold of it and grow up and then there’s a very simple one that I put into my garden and it’s just made with toost if you have space issues or if you’re growing varieties that do grow up vertically you can create your own trellis system some people use cane this one is with tpost and a tpost Slammer we’ll put the tpost in and then you’ll want to cut your piece of wire in this instance I’m using a 4ft piece of wire and you just wire that on to the T POS enough to hold the weight of the fruit and also for the wind I attached this one in four places with some simple wire and you’ll want to turn the wire ends back in away so you don’t come up on them when you’re working in the garden you can see the irrigation is uh irrigating the plants with the three every place you have a plant and the places you don’t see a plant I just plant made by seed and we’ll go back to Jane Nicole and Reed so thank you for the presentation Julie um I live in Colorado and I was looking at the drip system that you have that you were showing and I also have a drip system for my landscape and it um what well I know that the drip system works because we set it to a certain time like in the mid around midnight and we let it run around 45 minutes to an hour and we’re doing it every every day so the drip system is actually the way to go because I don’t have to worry about it I don’t have to water anything unless it’s really hot like above 90° then I will start watering like hand watering too just to give it a little bit more moisture but I can say that the drip system actually really works and it’s the easy way to go yeah I agree I do like drip systems um I use the Mets because it is the least evaporative effect and uh rather than using the sprayers but it is so easy um currently mine is not run professionally in the ground I do feed my all my Orchards and my Vineyards and everything else um well the the main 5 and2 acre Vineyard is all in the ground done but around the house everything is just fed with garden hoses that does make a problem with uh keeping up with the yard and you have to move hoses out of the way to mow underneath them but uh they are definitely the way to go and they’re pretty affordable yeah and then another thing is in my backyard so last year cuz I live in Colorado it was raining so much last summer and so it started to be where my soil was soaked and it was kind of like um how do you explain it like quicksand so my the pH level in my soil was so wet that it seemed like everything was sinking so I think soil has to be you know we need to really pay attention to the pH level in the soil because um right now I can’t plant anything in ground in my backyard because the soil is too wet you’ll need to set up something and try to get it to drain it does get expensive if you have property and you can’t really dig up your yard it would cost a lot of money to haul stuff out and haul stuff in um I think eventually some of this climate stuff will will smooth out some I’ve had years down here the Garden or with the uh big Vineyard and thought I was going to lose half of it for the same reason uh grapes don’t like wet feet and that’s like too much water on the roots and it is really concerning um rain is very good for washing things out of your soil that are bad though like salts so we’ve had drought here for two years now and that is one thing that you’ll want to be aware of in your water it may be worth a professional advice on a water test just to measure how much salt is in your water because during droughts you will build up salts and that is very hazardous to PL so hey so Jane or Nicole do you guys have any questions for her I’m just going to back Julie on the salt because during drought your water table in your um soil it it goes down but when this water table goes down the salts rise and they can cause a lot of issues and we have noticed that here big time here in Australia especially in the farming Community who rely on flood irrigation so um it can be a really big issue but as Julie was alluding to for you re drainage in your yard is absolutely Paramount to allow the soil to actually drain whether it’s you know when you’ve got high rainfall areas you look putting in some under underground uh water reserves tanks Etc but that’s quite expensive to do so and you need professional help to do that so um just be mindful of that do what you can do within a budget you know you and just be super careful but yeah great job Julie I don’t have any more questions but I do I’ll go wrap it up here yep go ahead so in summary gardening is work but it’s definitely worth it for the flavor the internet has a lot of information for beginner and advanced gardeners that’s why gardening goes hand inand with QSI do your own research every area is different different parts of the country I know the East part of the US has acidic soil and then here I am sitting with a with a high pH age so every location is different look look on the internet and just dig in there you’ll get your answers choose the location and how big you want to start and your varieties improve and loosen your soil plan and maintain a watering system I do Journal weather conditions and my actions in my garden every year that allows me to go back and compare my yields versus what I chose to do and versus the weather conditions at that time and I can look back and go yeah that probably wasn’t the best idea I should try this again next time um so you may want to keep a journal utilize trellises to maximize use of space and accommodate climbing varieties most of all be patient with yourself you will get the feel and the hang of hang of how how to do your watering um measuring 1 to two inches a week can be difficult but you can use a little empty tuna can and set it under one of those emitters run your system for an hour and see how much water fills up in that can so there are ways that you can kind of help yourself with that and Gardens can be simply functional or they can be beautiful so flower it up and then as promised here’s the planner box design for the person in chat that asked for it it comes with a material list and a cut sheet so you know how to cut those materials and put it together this version is rustic you can paint that up or stain it up and make it as pretty as you want to so it is very just a simple versatile and there are things that you can work and change there so that concludes my presentation I thank y’all for uh being interested in watching I just want to say thank than you Julie for your presentation on I love learning new stuff I’m not good at it as Jane likes to point out I’m not good at all this stuff but it never hurts to learn and one day we will I will try my best to um Implement all of things that we’ve learned throughout these homesteading calls so thank you so much and I can’t wait to hear Mara talk so Mara let’s go ahead and introduce yourself um please let us know why this is your passion and I know you’re going to be talking about potted um edible plants thank you r hi everybody it’s really great to be here and just want to say Julie that was an incredible presentation thank you I learned so much so I am Mara and I’m currently volunteering in both the Ontario and the New York forums which is super fun and I live in Toronto where I have lived all my life and I’ve had the pleasure of working with herbs for years both at home and with my work so it’s a bit twofold for me and it’s been an amazing journey and you know having plants around in any capacity I’m in the city it’s a little more urban for me so having even just small herbs anything around you it’s so healthy to have plants around and actually grow your own food so it’s really empowering to grow your own food and it’s just it’s really cool to think that you could have sort of land that Julie’s got and make these huge beautiful gardens but for someone like me I don’t have that so so herbs is a really big part of our life and it’s a really big part of our ecosystem and it’s it’s amazing okay so I’m going to start my presentation okay so we are going to be discussing herb potting 101 and the thing about herb potting 101 is you this is really for anybody so this is for the true beginner someone who has never even potted anything in their life before this is what we’re going to talk about so this is something that hopefully everybody will think they can actually do by the time that we’re done here and we’re going to be discussing curating a basil mint and rosemary culinary potted Garden so is re referred to as an Edible Garden and the first thing we want to talk about is we want to talk about your planting mindset so before we’re going to go to the garden center and get all excited and get all our herbs and our new pots and all our fun stuff we want to talk about your planting mindset and just to get inspired about what you’re about to do and to understand that anyone can have a green thumb with the right mindset so again if you start off thinking oh I’m I don’t know if I can do this oh I might kill the plant oh I’m going to overwater the plant well guess what you probably might do that so what you want to do is have high Vibes have a great mindset and just think of how much fun this is going to be the other thing that’s great about your planting mindset is understand that any size space is going to work so this is a great project in the sense that you could have a 5 by5 inch square little spot on your window sill in your kitchen that’s enough to start a herb guard so you don’t have to have a big huge space so again it’s really easy to start this way the other thing is you want to stay motivated so it’s really important to have your end goal in mind what are you going to use your fresh herbs for are you loving pizza do you want to start adding fresh basil onto a pizza do you love making mocktails like whatever it is that you want to do this will help you stay motivated and and help you also pick which herbs that you might want to try out and of course as we talk about all the time k a keep it simple and start small this doesn’t have to be overwhelming this can be such an easy project to start so again you can start this with one single pot and one single herb and you all of a sudden have your own edible herb garden another thing that’s great this is a super budget friendly project so we’re going to talk a bit about the budget we’re going to talk about what we bought and how much and so on and so forth but you can start this project for very very many Minal cost so again it’s it’s great and of course have fun just have fun with this don’t stress out that you’re now in charge of a plant they’re going to do it it’s going to be great and as I as I like to say it’s really part of our ecosystem at home so the next thing you’re going to want is you’re going to want a planting plan so you’ve got to start considering certain things for example what size space do you have to work with so literally stand in your condo stand in your apartment stand in your house look around where’s my window sill where in the backyard would I want to put something so start analyzing where you actually want to start your little Edible Garden because that’s key again before you’re running off to the garden center and you’re going to want to figure out okay well what size pots what fits in that space so your measuring tape is going to be your new best friend and you’re going to want to have that handy too and the other thing is you’re going to figure out what is my design style because again if you go to the Garden Center you’re going to get very over there’s so many great pots there’s so many great Styles there’s so much going on there so really kind of figure out what works for you and decide do I want a square pot do I want a round pot but that’s something also it’s good to have this all in the back of your head before you hit the garden center and of course what’s your budget that’s big because again when you hit the garden center you’re going to see so many amazing things you might want to buy so it’s definitely important to figure out what your budget is and last what’s your commitment so if you are the kind of person who’s home all the time then obviously this is an easy task for you but if you’re working and you’re running around try to figure out like if you’re thinking I have to be home twice a week to water this plant just make sure you’re going to be home twice a week to water that plant so try to do something that’s going to fit within your commitment of what you can actually do all right next up how much sun do my her pots need so we have indoor her pots and we have outdoor her pots and we’re going with general rules at this point because as Julie said it’s based on weather patterns it’s based on what’s going on your in your region and so on so general rule of thumb for indoor herb pots 6 to eight hours of bright sunlight is great Sunny location near a window now a window is key you can’t leave a herb pot on your desk the herb pot has to be by the window by the bright light so it’ll get lots of light all day long and Southern Exposure is great especially for indoor now you might have southwestern exposure you might have Southeastern exposure but you basically want some sort of Southern Exposure which would be ideal and then your outdoor herb pots so for Basil and rosemary you want six to eight hours of full sun so when they when they talk about Sun they usually use the terms full sun and Paras Sun so you’ll start hearing some buzzword as we go through this project but so basil and rosemary 6 to8 hours of full sun mint can take 6 to eight hours of full sun and again we’re big on mint we have mint in blazing sun here in Toronto on a back deck but it can also do four to six hours of Sun so don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the exact numbers that I’m putting up here right now okay so we’re going to talk about the items needed for potting your herbs this is two parts first we’re going to start with the tools and the fill and then we’ll get into the herbs and the containers after so it’s a again this is a super simple little list tools you need a pair of gardening gloves you need a measuring cup and I’m going to get into that because we actually use measuring cups instead of watering cans when we’re watering our herbs which I’ll get into you’re going to want some sort of garbage bag you’re going to want a hand Trel which you’ll see what that is in a minute and for your fill you’re going to want organic potting soil now we go organic we keep it super simple super clean one stop shop for that and you’re going to want 38 of an inch of River Rocks or base fill as sometimes it’s called and all of this stuff you can find at the Garden Center too okay so we’re going to go into a little video describing your planting tools and your pot Bill okay guys we’re going to go over what you’re going to need for your fill and your tools for potting your herbs so let’s start with the tools first up we have gardening gloves and these gardening gloves are something that are great to have on hand if you don’t have a pair and if you want you can actually find really great garden gloves for a couple of bucks at the dollar store so this is a great handy thing to have regardless you’re going to need a pair of garden then you’re going to need a measuring cup this is a two cup measuring cup but it can be a one cup a two cup whatever you got and we’re going to be using this as your watering because it’s really great to use a measuring cup once you figure out how much water you’re going to put in your herbs and we’ll get into this in more detail this is a way better way to gauge how much water the herbs are going to need next up a garbage bag so we’re going to PO on a garbage bag I’m using a clear one just because it’s easier for to see what we’re doing but just a plain black garbage bag a small kitchen garbage bag anything that you’ve got on hand will be perfect and then again when all the dirt falls into this you can either compost the dirt or put it back in your dirt bag but you won’t have to waste it and then lastly is your hand travel now this is something we actually picked up at the Garden Center for $3.98 and the point of this is this is such a great project that’s not exensive so another great thing obviously to have on hand this is called a hand Trel truly for what’s even going on you probably even use a big cooking spoon if you don’t want to go to the of getting something like this but this would be the tools that you’re going to need for putting your hers and then next up is your fill so two things for your fill over here we have 38 of an inch of River Rocks which when you botom up the garden center which we did for this particular project we actually bought a bag there’s we have a whole bunch of bags that rip open so we actually got it for half price so that cost $445 a massive of those which you can use for so many fun things um and great is to have on hand so that’s your River Rocks that we are going to line the base of your pot with before we add your soil and we’re making this again one sof shot this is an all-in-one premium organic moisture mix We Pi up Pro mix which I quite like because it’s organic um and you’re literally using one type of soil for this project and that is it that is all of your fill and all of your tools that required for this project okay so I’m going to pass it back to re Nicole and Jane so being a beginner what does the Rocks actually do to have rocks so this is a great question so the rocks are really important because there’s there’s something that really needs to happen when you’re potting your herbs and it’s drainage so without proper drainage what can happen is the roots can L The Roots basically need to be drained so as the water is going through the dirt through past the actual Roots it needs to go somewhere and even if you’re going to have little holes in the bottom of your pot if you still want to have some sort of rocks it’s almost like a buffer so basically what then happens is the water will go and even if it’s hanging out in the Rocks because you have too much water in the the base of your pot sitting in your actual little thrip tray you’re still safe so it’s so some sort of Rock is a must have um people sometimes use mulch people sometimes use spagna Moss people sometimes use all these things again sometimes you don’t know what the chemicals are on certain products so we’re also exactly like Julie it’s really important clean organic and so on so I like the Rocks because when you get the Rocks they actually come with like sand and soot and all kinds of little fun things on them so you have to pre-wash them but then you have clean material so even if water sitting a bit into the actual rocks it’s not there’s no weird chemical that’s going to then kind of seat back up into the soil and just to clarify we can get any kind of rocks right just little small ones so that’s a great question I was just having this conversation with someone so yes because what you want to do is you want non forests so we for example the 38 of an inch is great because it’s almost like a pebble like you say like a small rock you just don’t want something chorus that’s going to actually take the water in and get moldy so anything like a rock um is great and again similar to what Julie saying go when you go to the Garden Center people at the Garden Center love their jobs people are in a garden center because they love working there they are so knowledgeable they can help you with so many great things so when you go even if you’re not sure just ask they’re so happy sometimes you have to get them to stop talking because they want to talk forever and ever because they love it but that’s that’s what I would suggest for sure but any sort of Little Rock is great something that doesn’t have any sort of chemical on it and is super clean great thank you Nicole or Jane um no I I Mara’s right draining drainage in pots is essential because I can remember doing that sort of stuff with my grandmother and she was always saying come on let’s go down the river we were really lucky we were able to go and get River shell from the river and just put them into our little pots and you know we’d probably half the time pot stuff down at the river and then card it home once we’ve done it um but yeah drainage is Paramount especially for those that like to add just a little bit much water to their pots because that way then it saves them all right um but anything can be grown in a pot I think that’s I don’t think there’s any real questions yet cuz I think Mala covered the questions okay want Nicole did you have any questions or do you want me to go go ahead go ahead fabulous okay okay so we’re going to talk about the other items needed for potting your herbs and this now we’re getting into the good stuff so you’re going to be looking for your herb plants and your containers on the the left of the screen here you can see that there are three pots we have happening and these are the basil the mint and the Rosemary and if you can see there’s little pots here there’s one here for the Rosemary it’s like a almost like a gray recyclable pot this is one of the organic suppliers that we love these are compostable brown little containers and sometimes at the Garden Store you’ll see them also just in a white container or whatever some sort of pliable plasticky kind of con container so this is just a nice picture of your basil your mint and your Rosemary but also when you’re at the when you’re looking for herb plants again there’s so many great choices so there’s chives there’s cilantro there’s parsley’s a big one by the way um because parsley’s one of those things if you’re not really sure what you want and you’re not you’re kind of like well I don’t know I don’t know if I’m going to make pizza with bassil I don’t know if I’m gonna whatever it is I’m going to do so parcy is a great one just to have as a fresh healthy herb at home so if you’re not sure that’s a really great one to start with um and there’s things like oregano and lots of great stuff so when you are at the Garden Center you want to definitely look for herb plants that are organic if possible and most of the Times They Are this stage of the game but just definitely always look for clean organic and again they’re going to come in these little 4inch plastic pots and you’re going to definitely keep these never throw anything out you want to keep everything you can always reuse these for scooping dirt and just all kinds of little fun projects with kids and Grand kids you can use them to repot if you want to split your herb which we won’t get into right now but there’s lots of fun things you can do you also want to look for damp soil you want it to be sort of damp to the touch and you don’t want to have any wilted or Dead Leaves so you basically can comparison shop so when you go to the Garden Center you’re going to see if you haven’t sort of been shopping for herbs in the past there’s basically huge Vats of them huge rolling racks of these things so let’s say you’re like okay I want to I want to get some Rosemary so when you walk up and you see this whole vast array of Rosemary you can sort of see which one looks better which one looks healthier so just definitely comparison shop and pick the one that looks best to you next up are your containers now BPA free plastic so BPA I think some people know what that is but it’s bisphenol a plastic that is a big no no simply that if you have a plastic container you don’t want to have anything leeching into your soil so BPA free plastic is pretty much mandated around the world but always good to ask when you’re at the Garden Center if you like the idea of a plastic pot you can also look at fiberglass ceramic or clay like a terracotta pot and as Jane was saying before and R and I were just talking about Good drainage is instrumentally key to this full exercise so if you have good drainage you are so ahead of the game and you need to have a good drip train underneath which we’ll get into in the video in a moment now when you are trying to figure out okay what size herb for what size pot right that’s the big question so depending how you’re going to plant your herbs and again you just can start with one small pot this is how great this is so one her plant any of these guys up here that we looked at that’s a 4 inch diameter pot across the top so you want to get a pot to fit that’s about 5 to six in you want a good sort of inch to two inches of breathing room around that when you pot it so it’s got room to grow and and be really happy if you’re thinking okay I actually would love to do three herb plants well great so look for a container that has more of a 10 inch diameter to it and that is perfect and if you’re thinking okay I’m ready to bring this I’m going to do six her plants and I’m going to make a big Basel balm or whatever I’m making then you would look for something like a 14in diameter pot for that okay so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to do a little bit more detail on the herb plants and containers that you need Okay so let’s talk about shopping for your herbs most local garden stores have just started to receive all their herbs in so this is perfect timing to go herb shopping they’re going to come in 4 in recyclable pots similar to this or possibly something in a similar Square remember to try and buy organic herbs as well and don’t rush when you go shopping take your time and check each plant if the plant looks a bit wilted or the leaves are yellow then look for another one as well if the soil is super dry look for ones that have just been watered and the soil feels damp to the touch price-wise herb plants are on special at our garden center so we picked up these for three herb pots for 10 bucks and these can range up to $4.99 to $5 per based on Canadian pricing this one is a basil herb which I’m pointing at and it’s the general variety at the Garden Center and you can see I have two that we got from the same Garden Center the taller thicker one and the smaller baby one in front if you have a choice go for the bigger one as you can start to harvest your leaves sooner and enjoy your herbs this is Rosemary and it’s a super hearty herb you can get this at any size really and it grows up pretty fast and finally we have our gorgeous mint mint is a beautiful herb but very invasive so what that means is it not only will it grow quickly it takes over your pot and takes up all the dirt space in your pot so you want to plant it on its own not with other herbs basil and rosemary should not be planted together since basil needs more water than Rosemary does and a general rule of thumb is to separate herbs by watering and sunlight needs and at the end of the presentation there will be a herb watering and sunlight chart for you guys for reference okay so next up let’s talk about your containers there’s different types of containers to choose from BPA free plastic which is really important it’s BPA free but most Plastics are now fiberglass ceramic and Terra and there’s two container musthaves proper drainage and drip tray we’re going to be potting with our 3D pots made from sustainable plastic which is this right here and as you can see dra drainage is super important this is called mesh drainage and it gives great even water distribution and it comes with a drip tray like this so this is the actual drip tray you can also find regular BPA free plastic containers like this one from the dollar store they have drainage holes as well which is great and it’s actually got a base that’s attached just clicks on and off but this is also great container color darker colors are better for outside in the back yard however you can definitely go with white they just need a bit of extra love to keep them clean and then measuring your space for your pots remember you want to measure where you can fit your herbs along with making sure there’s enough sunlight in that space okay so measuring your herb pots to your containers the general rule of thumb is to get a container that’s 1 inch to two inch wider than your herb plant so for example with a standard 4in herb pot which is this guy here you’re going to do the diameter across the top of the pot you’re going to want a 5 to 6 in container to pot the single herb so this guy is a 5 and a half inch diameter pot and you can use your ruler or measuring tape and take it with you when you go shopping and that’s super helpful to bring along when you’re buying your containers and here’s a great style tip a rectangle planter always looks great it’s sometimes hard to find the right size whether it’s for a window ledge or your outdoor dining table so a great look is to plant three single herbs one in each pot and run them along your window sill or backyard dining table which gives the illusion of an actual rectangle and if you windy backyards you may want to go with planting more of a three herb pot like this one that one is a 10in diameter pot and we’ve got three mints in that one right now or a simple trick if you like to run of the three containers is just add in more River Rocks in the base fill to give it more weight and for maximum fact we have our 14-in container that we can fit up to six herb pots into if you do lots of cooking and are entertaining and or have a favorite herb or herbs you want just one big pot to take care of this is a great option and a total showster look we have this one in our backyard filled with mint and we call him Monty the mint bomb and not only is he great for cocktails desserts appetizers but even a great deterrent for pests back to you guys nor thank you for that Mila I do actually have a couple of thoughts that came to mind as you were going through that um in regards to you know some herbs as we know or for those of us in the know know that they’re good for also pest repellent so insect repellent even in your actual General Garden like Basil’s a great one for that um so if there any others that you would recommend for everyone that is actually planting a garden that they should get for to to help with insect control and the other thing that I actually had a thought of um kitty cats kitty cats and herbs are there some herbs that do not like kitty cats okay so first part of your question so insect control so I would say every herb has almost like a different um capability to it right but basil as you say is one of those great ones it’s so generic it’s so easy to find that’s a great one to plant the other one we again mint mint is amazing most pests do not like mint they just abore the smell of mint so we actually have started putting we usually have our big pot but we’ve actually sort of put it in key parts around the backyard where we know they actually the raccoons come and we have all those fun you know Urban pets that kind of hang out so so we we find mints a great one another one that we quite like is called lemon bomb and lemon bomb is also like a sort of a lineage of mint and that’s another really nice one for it’s got a great scent to it um it’s from the mint family but it also is um a great pest repellent so again I would say you know there’s there’s so so many options of different pest repellant but I would keep it simple and sort of pick one so if you’re thinking okay I just want one that’s really good like I’m just going to go with one I’d say basil or mint would be my options for those um and then again when you start getting more into it then literally go again go to your garden center talk to all the amazing gurus there and say hey now I’m adding another herb what would you recommend as a great Pest propellent and tell them what’s in your backyard I have really bad spiders I have whatever it is right whatever the pest is and they can probably help you custom pick a herb which would be kind of cool so for the kitty cats I actually have no idea to be honest I have no clue I don’t we have a dog so we don’t have to deal with the kitty cats in our house so I there probably are a few that aren’t good I mean we grow cat grass as well um because we like to the look of it for all kinds of fun things and they love that but maybe you know do you know spe specific ones that are good for cats that the cats don’t the cat shouldn’t eat uh I know there are some specific herbs that do not like kitty cats um so they won’t grow if a kitty cat comes and plays in their pot they will die time is one that really does not like kitty cats so if you do have a kitty cat you need to be mindful that uh there are some herbs that will not grow because um the kitty cats will go and sleep in the pot they’ll go and do their business in the pot they’ll use it as their little tray so just be mindful of that which one is that is there specific ones or do you want me to I can always find out and put that in chat later if you want but is there specific ones there yeah time okay time is one that does not like kitty cats won’t good know good to know okay thank you so Mara you uh talked about the plastic containers versus the Ceramics and all that and for those of us that are on a budget I’m assuming that we would probably go with the plastic however with these containers have you ever experienced mold great question okay so of all the containers the easiest ones to now this is this is assuming you’re not leaving anything out in the winter time so let’s just start with we’re actually all working in the summer and we’re going to then maybe bring the pots inside depending where you are so I would say the Terra Cotta the clay those are the ones that kind of when you so again earlier on we talked about if anything that people do mostly it’s say overwater so Jane was mentioning this earlier like that is that is truly again why drainage is your friend right so really the big one that kind of starts to like get that it’s almost like um you could call it mold you can call it like a SE patina like some sort of like weird looking finish you’re not sure what it is that would be your terracotta pots they start to get like a different color going they start to look uneven so I would say for the beginner to not go near the Terracotta I think that’s a safe bet if you want something that you want is really easy to take care of to and also you got to think of how heavy some of these pots are so if you also like maybe for example like you just you can’t lift something that heavy and even if it’s just one sort of pot even when you start getting into things like a fiberglass sometimes the fiberglass which are beautiful they’re kind of heavy to move around so if you don’t have like a good Sherpa to help you move the stuff around you’re really good to go with something like a plastic because again plastic you can get in amazing colors um way less expensive and they’re just the easiest to take care of you can wipe them down they’re easy to move around so I would probably start with plaster great thank you Nicole I will I will ask that one that I asked Julie and she deferred back to you um and it’s referring to the watering which I know I have a horrible habit of overwatering which I’m going to work on um but this one said should you be watering from the bottom of the plants in the containers okay and that’s a great question it’s funny it really all boils down to watering like this is the whole thing like fing the plants is easy picking your containers easy it always is the it’s always the watering so that’s actually a two-part answer the first part is sometimes when you bring your herbs home in those little sort of 4inch pots those little plastic pots that we were talking about before you’re planting them we’ve had times where all of a sudden we’ve kind of put them out and we’re like oh wait we did who did anyone pot yet like what they’re still not we haven’t poted these things yet so sometimes they can actually start to dry out a little bit if you don’t pot right away and again that’s going to happen so from that standpoint those little pots that are just sort of like the you know to go ones from the actual Garden Center we would we always water those from the bottom so what we would do is we take like a bowl and we would take that before we’ve actually potted it into like a container and we’ actually let it absorb the water from the roots up because it’s really easy to see what’s going on and it gets water it gets a really good healthy drink right at the bottom of the roots when it goes into your actual pot there’s a few reasons it’s not going to work one is first of all if you live in the city and this is just good to know for any sort of um planting and watering situation sometimes the water is really hard like our water is really hard in Toronto and it’s like calcium and white like weirdness happening right so sometimes when you actually take a container and you put it and you let it sort of drink from the bottom up all of a sudden you get like this white film like on the outside of your container you can’t get off so that’s not good but also because you have all your little rocks in there what’ll happen is you’re kind of Dr the the rocks are going to drink like it’s not even going to make it up to the roots because we’ve actually put that sort of layer in of protection so you always want a water from the top however if you bring your herbs home and you forget to pot right away you can even put them in the sink like your sink put an inch of water in and let all the pots just sit there and drink and be happy perfect thank you that’s all I have for now okay great so I’m I’m going to move along here okay so now we’re going to talk about actually potting your curbs and there’s three stages to this you have your pre potting you have your potting and you have your post potting so for your pre potting again this is one of those things you’re going to bring all the stuff home and you’re going to be thinking what am I doing with everything there’s only one thing you need to do before your actual potting project is if you’re going to get your River Rocks that you’re GNA we talked about from the garden center or whatever it is you’re going to use for that base fill you want to make sure you completely rinse that off and lay it out to dry we say minimum an hour but just long enough that they’re super dry before you put them in the bottom of the pot when you’re going to start potting because all of a sudden it’s already wet and you just want it nice and clean and dry before you start then when you pot your herbs you want to organize your space so again just lay everything out organize your your space put out your garbage bag that you’re going to pot on so you don’t make a big mess and all your tools and all your plants then you’re going to add your River Rocks and like your base fill into the bottom then your potting soil and then you’re going to make sure when you add your potting soil that you leave one inch space below the top of your pot and think about this from like a common sense standpoint so if you were to actually put your dirt all the way flesh to the top of the container when you actually dry to water the water is just going to flow right out of a pot so always leave a good one inch in there so that you’ve got lots of space to water and then post potting your herbs this is just a teeny bit of Maintenance this isn’t even a big deal but basically I’d say halfway through the summer you’re going to see that all of a sudden the dirt in your plants might sort of settle in a little bit into the pot which happens so if that’s the case easy fix just take some of your potting soil that you have left over from when you did your potting and actually just top it up so that it actually has some fresh soil on top okay so now we’re going to show the actual potting of your herbs okay so let’s pot our herb into the Container this is your final product what we’re going to do is take this on you can use your gloves but I’m actually going to use my hands I’m adding in my River Rocks the ones that we pre-washed and dried just enough for a layer on the bottom to help with the drainage then you’re going to add your dirt I’m going to do two actually three good scoops of the dirt so using my hand Trel then I’m going to shake this around and you can use your fist and just gently Pat the dirt down so it’s a little bit sturdier take your herb you’re going to pinch the container gently pull the herb out place this on the dirt you want this to be about an inch down from the top of the pot and we’re going to take our hand Trel and we’re going to twist the pot and keep adding dirt and again we’re going to Pat this down gently we’re going to water it and you guys are done it’s a bit dirty that’s all good dirt is good dirt is your friend so just keep going and keep twisting like so okay all the excess dirt you’re going to pack back into your bag when you’re done okay plant down like this pack them down like so okay going to brush off the extra dirt and then for watering you’re going to take your cup your measuring cup I’ve put about a cup in here and you’re going to keep watering to make sure as you go as soon as you start to see water down in the bottom of the drip tray then that is how much water you’re going to want to be giving to your herb pots and that is it planting your herbs okay so there you go planting your herbs any questions oh my God I think I can do that you’re step by no seriously step by step instructions I was getting excited because I’m like okay I hope she does it you know step by step so I was looking at I was like I think I can do that it looks really simple thank you I’m gonna add a reminder I’m gonna add a reminder for re before Mara starts don’t overwater it remember R when you see the water down the bottom stop don’t keep trying to overflow it well I used to I would water it every single day even if it was damp I would just continue to water and it would flow down and I’m like watering watering because I thought that that’s what you had to do well I hope after this exercise we all know it’s not right and and again this is this is one of those things where and we’ll talk about this in a minute but it’s very important to actually watch your herb so I can sit here and say all day long water it twice a week but if you live in a different climate and you have dry air in your house and you have a breeze coming from the left side and you like so you kind of have to really be aware of what you’re doing but as far as actually the planting and sort of just being one with your plant you have the right mindset now so this is good you got this is all good I love it that’s great I do have one question so as far as once you get it planted and it starts growing how do you know just the right time to to pick the herb and use it well you’re two slides ahead of me on my presentation Sor so that’s a great question okay okay all right but great question thank you thank you okay any Jane are you good are you good okay okay so now we’re going to talk about watering your herbs again like I don’t think we can talk about this enough so this will be the last of it but so general rule of thumb do not let the soil dry out okay so let’s unpack that for just a minute so you got to understand also that there’s different parts of your plant the pot that’s like when you water your pot top of the soil is going to dry out but the Bottom’s not going to dry out so again this is why I keep saying you got to gauge and you got to kind of watch what you’re doing so General Ru with them yes do not let the the soil dry out but to re’s point you kind of think like oh I’m just going to keep watering I’m going to keep watering you don’t have to do that you just have to kind of look at the leaves and kind of watch what it’s doing if it looks happy then it’s happy don’t then if it looks happy don’t water it let’s start with that one also depending how hot and dry basil and mint I’d say on average two to three times per week that’s in my climate Rosemary it’s a heartier herb so probably twice a week and again based on your weather Julie brought this home too and containers with good drainage as we know will help keep the water flowing through to the bottom of the pot and excess water so again if you overwater you’ll start to see like root and leaf diseases and simply what that means is the leaves start looking a little yellow like it just looks a little bit less lustery so you’ll be able to tell if you’re watering if you’re overwatering so that is the big thing is the overwatering for sure okay we have a very important thing that we have to do we have to learn how to talk to our plants and as we’ve been learning in QSI over and over and over everything is frequency and vibration for everything on Earth and that actually includes your herb plants so it’s really important to always be and I find plants also bring a high vibration back to you so you got to sort of be in a high Vibe when you’re talking to your plants and dealing with your plants but when you are talking to your plants you want to talk to them with love and this brings us to the I love you rule and there was something done once where they took two containers of rice and one box of the rice or one of the jars said I love you and one of the jars said I hate you well I love you rice was talk to and talk to and told how much they loved them the other one was completely left alone and as you can imagine the I love you rice fostered and was so happy and the other rice not so much so it’s really important that you literally make this part of your family like herbs become part of your ecosystem and really just as I go back to the beginning you just want to have fun like have fun with your herbs it’s fresh it’s life you’re growing your own food there’s there’s no downside to this another thing that’s really fun to do with your kids and grandkids is to actually name your herb plants so on the right as I’ve talked about earlier this is our Monty this is Monty our mint bomb and Monty’s name is brought up in our house a lot but you want to definitely name your herb plants come up with something fun with the grand kids we have a client who they have a big container like this one and the grandkids have literally planted all their Lego pieces into it now obviously like make sure anything the grandkids are planting in here is obviously waterproof but again it’s just a really fun family project so definitely bring the rest of the kids and the grandkids into this for sure okay this is a new term we’re going to learn tonight and this is a leaf node which is part of harvesting your leaves so this is this is going back to Nicole’s question so basically on the left you’re going to see a big long stem of mint and at the top of the mint and here we can see this is what the leaves look like which we’re all very familiar with but this is something that we’re going to talk about called a node and a node is very important when you’re going to be cutting your actual herbs a node is basically where the leaf grows out of the stem so there’s a million nodes on here right well not a million but you see a lot so everywhere on the stem where the leaf is growing out that is called a node and if you go down here there’s something called the inter node which is the space between the nodes and of course we have the stem so I’m going to focus on the Node for when we’re actually doing the harvesting on the right hand side of the screen we have a basil stem and what we’re going to be doing and you’re going to see also in the quick video but we’re always all your herbs you’re always going to be cutting above the node you never want to cut on a node you want to cut just above it and I’ll explain in a minute as to why and how it helps and it actually Fosters more growth but this is your new term for today is Leap nodes all right let’s talk about harvesting your mint your basil and your Rosemary so the best time to harvest and this is for all of them is in the morning usually after the Dew has gone away and before the heat of the afternoon sun has kicked in for your mint you want your mint to be about 6 in tall before you start harvesting and mint is pretty particular and we like to say don’t be a plucker because if you start plucking the leaves lower down on your plant it actually will cause stress to your mint so if you just need a few leaves you still cut off from the top of the mint plant don’t ever pick from the bottom of the mint because if you do it’s not going to be very happy and just as I was saying before when you cut above the leaf node when you cut the stem what’ll happen is your plant will create two off sheet stems from that one stem that you cut so that’s how you actually start getting more and more full herbs as well during the summer okay basil pretty similar want Harvest it in the morning before the heat about six inches tall and with the basil what happens is if you again you want it sort of um Fuller faster you can cut just a little 3in quarter of the immature PL at the top and it actually will cause it to become much thicker otherwise basil tends to grow up and get really skinny and it flowers pretty quickly which is not a bad thing but it just has a better taste um if you can keep it kind of lower and Lusher and again cutting stems will make your plant grow faster the two offshoot stems now if you do see the flower BDS developing on your basil plant you can snip them off to prolong the Harvest period and that’s actually called pruning which is different than Harvest ing harvesting is like I’m going to get some basil for my pizza I’m going to pick some mint for my mocktail that’s that’s harvesting pruning is when you are like going for it with the plant and you’re cutting purposely not to enjoy the herb but you’re actually doing it for the health of the herb and rosemary same thing best time to harvest in the morning and you’re going to look for the little flexible green stems that are emerging from the existing branches to know when it’s ready and we’re going to watch this in a video in a quick sec but you’re going to find branches that are 8 in or longer and you’re simply going to cut off just the top two to three inch now if you are snipping just a sprig here or there just only taking a few leaves you can do that as often as you want however for a larger Harvest like let’s say you’re doing some I don’t know amazing bread making with rosemary or whatever faka or something you want to do um avoid taking more than a third of the plant’s total size at a time because it’s going to need time to recover after the Harvest so you don’t want to take too much from the plant otherwise it won’t recover and also you can simply pluck just individual needles directly off the plant as you need unlike the mint which is a big no no and when you’re stripping the leaves you basically run your fingers along the stem from the top down to from the top down for your actual harvesting of those little leaves all right so now we’re going to watch a quick video to actually see harvesting your leaves okay so let’s Harvest our FB leaves so first we’re going to learn what the word uh Leaf node means and a leaf node is basically where the leaves come out of the stem so we’re always going to be cutting above the leaf nodes just above okay so let’s start with our basil take your scissors your shears whichever it is that you have kitchen scissors are also perfect and with the basil you always want to cut the stem from the Top If you need a couple of leaves for quick dinner or quick cocktail you can pull them from underneath just gently pinch them but otherwise you’re going to want to cut from the top and you’re going to take the whole stem and you’re going to be cutting above a leaf node simply like that okay so there’s your basil with your Rosemary you also want to cut from the top and you want to cut above the Woody part of the stem down towards the bottom and as these get bigger the Woody part’s going to be um stronger you’ll see it as it grows up so never cut the Woody part because the Woody part won’t grow back you want to cut from up here so you’re going to do again same thing clean pet and go just above the leaf nodes and there you have your Rosemary okay the mint same thing now never take Leaves From The Bottom it totally stresses out the plant you only want to cut the stem so again we are going to cut above right above just a little bit above the leaf nodes and there you have your mint okay okay Nicole question was answered thank you so now I know and I won’t do like I typically would do which I you know you go and you run your finger and you just pull the leaves off no I won’t do that I promise so thank you for answering my question I was a littlee of the game I got excited but thank you you’re welcome so Mara I have a confession to make I’m a plucker so I pluck from the bottom and then wonder why things don’t grow so I don’t you know with the with the herbs I don’t pluck from the node area I just start plucking from the bottom and then I’m sitting there like it never grows so thank you you’re very welcome and it’s a big deal like it really is a big deal and also just and it’s it’s amazing the little things right that make a difference but also even even for like a basil or any of the other herbs that you can sort of pluck from the bottom you want to gently pluck from the bottom like don’t rip it all you know what I mean like like just kind of gently take it because also it still is stress on a plant it is still life right it still has like frequency happening so definitely just make sure that you gently pluck but never your mint but never your mint yes my little task for this afternoon is I need to well miss is and I need to go out and harvest the Basel uh because I think it’s um what did she say chicken and pasta pesto or pesto pasta or whatever she calls it for dinner tonight so um yeah we need to go out and normally we just pinch with the the two fingers we’ll pinch um at the nodes and yes she does have a few that are going to seed and we do have plenty of Rosemary too and that just gets pretty um cutting cuz it he’s in the ground so and she’s waiting for her meat um very feverishly she has Posley too that’s great and Basil’s and again I think for for most people mint and basil are great starters I think those are really easy great starters for a lot of people because they can think of a lot of fun things to do with mint and with basil for food right yeah and the other thing too and we’re not getting into it on this this time but um you know with with your mint and basil like nothing goes to waste so again sustainability is a big deal it’s a very big deal to me um and and so we’re very cognizant of what actually goes into waste at the end of these projects and the nice thing is at the end of the season no it doesn’t matter how much you have left like if you thought you were going to do all this amazing you know basil smash da whatever you’re doing with your basil if you don’t you can dry it all and you have it as beautiful herbs for the rest of the you know offse so it’s such a winwin project that it’s there’s there’s no wrong for what you decide to do okay so here we’re going to talk just quickly about this this is something where again um you might when you want to troubleshoot a few little problems so one of them is we talked about this a bit before about any little bug issues if you find any little bugs again start really simple with this take a spray bottle add some water in there and try and spray it with a strong stream of water I find we like we actually like this quite a bit I find sometimes there are these little things called little white flies that sometimes um will be on the leaves and they actually we found they can resist garlic and soap spray methods so you’re welcome to try whatever you think works but always start again with just clean water and see how that goes as your plants get bigger and if you can lift them which we talked about earlier you also can pick up your whole plant and put put it in your shower and literally gently hose it down um as well if you feel like there’s just something happening that shouldn’t be happening in there but that should really probably fix it and when you’re ready to go to a stronger solution you can also use a spray bottle with food grade very important food grade peppermint oil and we do 10 drops of peppermint oil in a liter of water in a spray bottle and again similar to Mint just a great deterrent for pests and all kinds of fun things but that’s also something they really don’t like and it’s not harmful to the leaves so those are sort of any little bug issues that you might come across and then of course help my her plant is dying so you you’re three scenarios so again overwatering underwatering you got to love how two of them are a watering issue and another one being not enough Sun so again with the overwatering there’s the easiest thing really to do here is just stop watering it for a little bit see if it kind of comes back back because what that means is again overwatering the leaves you’ll start seeing almost like a yellow tinge on the leaves so if you if you water it less and it starts the leaves start to get greener you’re in good shape so you’re good that way if you’re underwatering the leaves will just feel sort of more wilty and just not the color will be there the green but it’ll feel a bit more wilty so you can definitely add more water but the trick of using an actual measuring cup is so good because then you can actually see exactly how much water you’re giving to to your herb and then next time you can say oh great I’m going to use my cup and a third of water exactly the way I did because I looked and I saw as soon as the water went into the the drip tray underneath I watered enough so that was great and lastly not enough Sun not enough Sun just means they won’t really grow so fast you’re going to kind of think huh like why aren’t they sort of picking up they should be getting more you know better I’m harvesting I’m trimming I’m doing all these fun things so just check the amount of sun that’s actually happening for that plant okay and this brings us to the original inspiration which is basically what are you going to use your herbs for so we thought it would be fun to make a little mocktail series for everybody and we put together an a mocktail recipe for a rosemary grapefruit mocktail Spritz a basil strawberry sparkling mocktail and a mint mojito mocktail so I hope you guys try these out we’ve tested them they’re great and I hope you guys can enjoy that and use them with your fresh herbs and last here’s a little herb planting chart Sun Soil and Water so this is a very very basic if you want to start figuring out which herbs you want to maybe get if you want to say oh I want to get basil and I want to get Dill well then maybe basil and Dill could work together because they’re both full sun one of them’s damp and moist one’s moist close enough and watering needs are medium and medium so this is a great little chart that if you’re if want to kind of go for it and do a couple together but again I defer back to the people at the Garden Center so I hope you enjoyed that that’s it thank you for that Mara very informative and I really would love to see re and Nicole start with a herb pot and take a beginning picture post it in the chat and give us progress reports even once a week to see how it’s going because I would really really love to see some great results because I know they can do it well if they have the planting mindset which they both now do I I think they can do it too I think that’d be amazing I think that’d be so much fun yes I agree I think that starting with the the herbs is probably the easiest and least overwhelming because when I think about doing a garden while Julie is it’s phenomenal I have to work up to that it’s just I understand the work that’s behind it and the time but I think starting with the small the herb that can get me kind of into it and then it goes from there so thank you I appreciate your presentation you’re so welcome and I just wanted to say one last thing is the other thing the pivotal moment of when you actually do these herbs is you you planted you followed all the directions you water you’re so good and then you actually pinch your little basil you pinch your little whatever and you actually eat it in a meal and you’re like I did that that was me so again super empowering it seems so small but it’s the small things right so so I hope everyone um takes the plunge and goes for it thank you both for your presentation um I do have a question for both of you which way would be faster to grow the herbs the Potted way or the ground because for me I know I’m going to start with the Potted because my soil is too wet so can you answer that for me either Julie or Mara oh Julie would you like to take this one so I would think uh if all your soil conditions are good in your garden I would think that the garden variety would be the larger one typically if you have them in a house they’re not going to quite get as much sun um but it all depends it depends on your watering it depends on you know just quality of your soil and that kind of stuff but I I would still put my beted on on the garden version my mother for years always grew mint in and around the front door and anybody that ever came up to the house I mean it just blasted you but it was just a beautiful smell they were so healthy there and and herbs are amazing so I just wanted to add um but I think also and to Julie’s point it’s I think that’s beautiful and it’s so Lush and amazing but if you don’t have the space and you have to do something in a smaller space and the the great thing about in a smaller space um is it’s a really controlled environment so you know right away if it’s not sunny enough you know it’s not sunny enough you can move it over like so you can really really pay attention to it so I think they’re I think both it just really depends on if you have the space number one and you have the wherewithal and you really really want to take on that project to do some amazing you know beautiful mint but if you’re kind of like just want to try I just want to try basil I just want to try a small basle you know then I think I think it really just you can do both I think both are the right option just start growing your own food and just see how to see how great it is I would say and the another question for the both of you which one are your favorite herbs to grow I do all the Italian herbs I love them um I love Italian food and I love cooking it so I’m kind of partial to those cilantro is all is another one that I enjoy growing and um and the Rosemary as well so we’re mint Fanatics because we just I don’t know there’s something so amazing about mint because we can dry it like we we sort of experiment with fun things with it um because there’s not a lot of sort of dessert herbs if that makes sense so you can actually take mint and you can almost chop it up like a herb but on like a fruit salad you can you know we take mint we’ll actually take it and freeze it in ice cubes and then we have fun drinks in the backyard with our like mint and our ice cubes kind of so we just kind of we kind of elevate mint right but I think again basil is an amazing one because again it’s easy to grow it grows quick quickly you can Harvest it quickly um we love making pesto we do a lot of pesto at home so that’s a really good one too and again for for we go through a ton of parsley because again when you just want to throw an extra herb into something it’s like oh someone go get the parsley so parsley’s a really good one too so I would say those would be my top three and then I’m gonna pass this to Jane because I know that she grows a lot so what is your favorite herb to grow we love growing Basel as I said before particularly for the insect repellent part of it and it’s so easy to grow we love pesto Miss is has been really super good at taking pesto to the face to faces that have been in the park so where everyone brings something cuz is loves to to cook um she is little chef she has more time than I do these days so she and it doesn’t matter whether it’s um something she’s grown herself but she really loves to use and showcase using natural produce so whether it’s Dairy um meat uh stuff she’s growing herself in the garden and what we haven’t grown herself she’s got a local fruit and veg supplier that she actually grabs stuff from but so we getting back to the question we we grow Basel we’ve got mint as well because um you know as a number know my son works on a dairy farm so we have access to farm fresh um so at the moment we’ve got lamb in the freezer so you can’t have lamb without Rosemary and mint so we’ve got both those as well um and ours aren’t in pots they’re just in the garden um so and she’s got parsley too cuz one of our um face to-face coordinators gave her a parley plant but yeah anyone locally wants Rosemary I’ve got plenty of those that they can come and pull some plants out great so I am definitely going to try basil first um and just try something easy I will do my best to start it off I I know that Mara showed us how to layer everything and so I’m going to try to do that because that looks so simple and I think someone like myself and Nicole can do something like that so I’m very excited I hope everyone took notes um especially the beginners those that are not too quite um good at gardening but are interested in something like this because we want to save money right and so this is a great way for us to save money and grow our own herbs um any last comments from anyone sure I just wanted to say first of all thank you this was so much fun fun to share something that I love to do so appreciate the uh ability to do that and also just um for people too like this is the other thing that’s great about what Julie and I are talking about is this is for everybody this is for people that are vegan vegetarian Celiac pescatarian like no matter what your food is that you do in your life this is something enjoyed by everybody so I just wanted to say I hope everyone takes a stab and I can’t wait to see your plants R and Nicole I’m going to be watching for you to well I’ll say it was fun working with you Marlin and thank you to Jane Nicole and REE for allowing both of us to come and do our presentations I do look forward to the comments and chat I’m sure there’s a lot out there for me to learn that I don’t know yet and gardeners we do have that in common we’re always looking for a better way so but thank y’all I’ve enjoyed it and one more thing I will say is there’s nothing more satisfying than knowing that you’re eating something for dinner that you have grown yourself there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to share Surplus produce that you have grown yourself with your neighbors and friends and know that they are eating healthily as well great with that said our next episode will be on Friday May 7 1th and we will go ahead and post a topic of the call so with that said thank you so much for just listening and hope you took a lot of notes and we’ll go ahead and see you back in the chat thank you very much thanks for watching this QSI presentation to join the QSI Community online just scan these QR codes and connect through our social media you can also access the QSI mobile training apps and online resources QSI by the people for the people