About : standard furniture bed
Title : standard furniture bed
standard furniture bed
(john) alright this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.comtoday we have another exciting episode for you we’re here at the “cind-r-lite blocks,sunblocks and bricks†and why we’re here today is actually i’m going to build a newraised bed and finding the best material to build my raised bed out of and that is theconcrete blocks, much like the… what is it… the three little pigs fairy tale wherethe one pig built his house our of straw, which you can build a raised bed out of justget straw bales, the other pig built his house out of wood which the big bad wolf blew downand one pig built his house out of bricks or concrete blocks that the wolf could notget into and the other little piggies were safe.so today i’m actually here to research and
find some blocks that i’m going to buildmy raised bed out of. you know, this is the best option for me to build my raised bedbecause it’s not wood that may degrade in the weather or some kind of plastic wood orsome other material, something that’s been here for a long time. so let’s head to theyard and check out what we got. alright, so as you guys can see we’re inthe yard, actually i’m just looking at all these blocks just stacked up all over theplace, totally insane. i’m going to find the best block that’s going to work forme so i can make a raised bed out of bricks instead of wood.alright, these are the blocks that i’ve been looking for [laugh]. check it out, sothese guys are just solid blocks and they’re
nice and heavy duty here and basically whati’m going to do is i’ going to take these guys and line them up. oh and check it outman, these ones are cool they even have a decorative on the edges, so actually that’skind of cool instead of the just plain flat look here, like on this guys.they got all this different kind of options, you know. this is just flat if you want thatflat look on both sides. this one actually has a design in it; it’s a straight linekind of indentation. that’s kind of cool they’ve got different patterns. i definitelylike this pattern that kind of breaks it up, makes it look a little more interesting. ofcourse they got different colors here, so they got like this color here… oh man, checkthis out! this is cool, i like this one the
most actually, that’s like a sanded lookthere, that looks pretty cool, that’s a nice decorative there on that one. they gotso many different kinds i would’ve not known this if i didn’t come out here to walk becausethe guy in the store, the shop, said “oh yeah we got this, this and this†but yeahman, definitely like this guy. it looks kind of like marble or something, it looks kindof fancy. then of course you know you could just getthe standard ones, just the gray ones or the tan ones, the tan flat ones, and then here’sanother kind right here actually they got all different kinds of ones here. oh lookat this, these ones are cool, they’re taller. that’s ultimate dude! it’s just one block.there’s another one right here it just has
cut outs on both sides, i don’t like thatone so much for a raised bed, but i think this guy right here, i like it because it’sjust so tall and this is like a large block here so i will not have to double stack theblocks. here are of course those standard red ones and then we get into these guys thatare hollow on the top so those ones won’t necessarily work for me. so another optionis these guys but the problem with these guys is they’re just too dang thin and althoughthey’re pretty good size if you stack them up this is prone to fall over unless you maybelike glue something together to reinforce them so i’m just definitely not going togo with these cheap thing guys here. [scene change] so i finally decided on theblocks i got, we got home here and got the
jeep loaded up with the blocks. now [hitscar] oops! so each one of these blocks weights like 31 pounds so it’s very important andcritical that you do not overload your car. i loaded m car until the wheel wells and thetires were kind of low and stuff and i’ like “that’s probably enough†and ifit 75 block in here so that’s a fair bit of weight and drove home, slow on the wayhome and over no major bumps, potholes or anything like that and we made two trips soi got 150 total blocks here and i did show you guys some of the different block optionsearlier in the video and the block that i liked the best was the biggest one that hadthat little line, the v groove, in it and actually they don’t sell those, those arewaiting to be processed because they put them
in a machine and then it basically comes downwith a little chisel and it basically splits them.so they couldn’t actually sell me those blocks and if they did they’d have to sellme the cut price times 2 which i found out is actually quite expensive. so the blocki liked the most which had that kind of cool finish on it, looked like granite i said,that was like 4 bucks! like one block! man, i’d go broke if i’d bought that many blocks.the block i liked that had that chiseled face with like a different kind of shape on it,that was like a dollar more and these and that was like $2.80 a block. so then i gotinto the low range blocks the cheapest blocks were $1.69 and they’re just these blocksjust in a gray color. so because this is something
i’m going to have to live with and lookat every day and you guys will be seeing in videos a lot now, i decided to go with a differentcolor. so they have 4 different color options including a red, a brown, a tan and some othercolor but, i decided to go with this guys this is the lightest color and they look kindof nice. so i wanted to get a light color because ididn’t want it to be too dark and absorb too much sun especially in the summer timewhen that may tend to dry out near the edges in the beds. also these will act out as heatsinks in the winter time so actually the sun will be out, these will get warmer and actuallyhelp warm up the soil. now as i alluded to earlier in this video there’s many differentoptions you have when building a raised bed.
in this particular situation i’m choosingto go with the bricks. we could’ve went with like a plastic lumber which i’m nota super fan of plastic you know it’s a manmade material made out of petroleum products andall this kind of stuff and i have used plastic in the other half of my garden here when thatwas an affordable option for me but i’ve decided to step it up a notch. of course icould’ve went with the wood and then treated the wood with a non-toxic stain and you knowi do have videos if you do and are going to use wood on the products i recommend to stainyour wood so they will last longer but i didn’t have to deal with the warping the crackingand it just breaking down over time and so the concrete blocks are my choice. they’reheavy duty, they’re solid and in addition
because this is a nice 4 inch width it’snot going to easily tip over and it’s actually a nice place to sit down when i want to workon my raised bed. another reason we went with the concrete blocksis because these guys are movable, you know. if i want to reconfigure my back yard, ifi want to use these for something else, if i want to sell them later down the road, youknow i’m not going to mortar these guys in, i’m just going to set them down nextto each other, bud them up against each other. they’re not going to move they’re so heavyso i can have my raised beds now and later on if i move or whatever i can bring thesewith me if i want to, i can leave them, i could take them away and sell them, i meanso many different things you can do and they’re
also easy to transport, 31 pounds, i’m gettinga nice workout lifting 150 of these guys out of my jeep.[scene change] alright, so now you can see we’re here in the backyard and in the backgroundway back there you can see the other half of the back yard actually which i plantedin round circular raised beds and at the time that i designed that and put that in i startedwith like 4 raised beds and the first thing i did was cleared and had a plan and actuallyyou can check back my past episodes. i have a really good one hour long episode showingme the process of taking literally a weekend to put in 4 raised beds. since that videoi’ve expanded and now i have twenty, a total of twenty 4-foot circular raised beds on theother side of the yard so i never developed
this side of the yard, i developed that sideof the yard first because it’s the more sunny side, it gets more sun. actually, rightnow it’s probably a quarter in the sun and this side has barely any sun at all.so, the first thing is before you start taking blocks and just putting them where you thinkyou should, is actually make a plan, determine where you get the most amount of sun. themost amount of sun is going to equal the most amount of growth but, don’t be sad. “johni don’t get no sun in my back yard, man! it’s on the wrong side of the houseâ€.don’t fret you know the side i’m developing now doesn’t get much sun but this can actuallybe a benefit because guess what? some plants don’t actually like full sun. some plantsdon’t like to get overheated and what not.
so i’m going to use the shade to my advantageand grow some crops that don’t actually need as much sun. so plants that need moresun in general are fruiting crops, thing like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants; thingsthat produce a fruit that you would eat. thing that produce leaves such as leafy greenvegetables, you know, kale, collards bok choi, lettuce, spinach and herbs, guess what? theydon’t need as much sun so you can put those in a shady spot. so on this side where we’remore on the shade i’m going to be growing some leafy greens and herbs in the shady spotsand some of this area that actually get more sun i’ll be growing some fruiting cropsthere. so, yeah, number one make a plan and whati’m going to do next is find the sunniest
spots, put my bed there if i was only goingto have one but i’m going to develop this whole half. i mean, it’s much more spaceefficient to have square boxes than round ones. the round one where inexpensive butif i had to do it all over i would‘ve just went with the blocks knowing that this isgoing to be a permanent installation and much smarter. at some point i’m going to probablytear out the round ones and put the square ones, the blocks, like i’m [doing] on thisside, you know after i determine this works and in between my planting seasons.so yeah, i’m going to take a few papers out, take the tape measure and basically sketchout the measurements here and then figure out how big my raised beds are going to be,how much the spacing in between the beds and
where the walkway is going to be and theni’m just going to come back, lay the blocks down, put the irrigation system in, fill themup and plant them out. so this will be a collection of videos, this one just has to do with settingthe blocks up and making the raised beds so if you’re not subscribed to my youtube channelmake sure to check my past videos and subscribe to my youtube channel for the rest of thisseries on how to build a block garden. alright, pretty much my last measurement,9 foot 6 inches, we’re going to go ahead and put this on the little map here that i’mmaking, layout. you will also want to note any kind of existing irrigation system, sohere’s where a sprinkler pops up. this will definitely be useful because what i’ll bedoing is actually i’ll be tying in the existing
irrigation system, when there was a lawn here,into my raised beds so they can get automatically watered. next i’m going to go ahead andgo inside, log this in the computer and start playing house.[scene change] alright, so i’ve been moving the bricks to the back here and got the planand all set up so at this point you want to do two things: number one, you’re probablygoing to want to put in your irrigation if you own your home. if you rent then you’remaybe going to want to put irrigation on top of the soil so that you can take it off andtake it with you. i’m actually putting the irrigation underneath the soil, this is goingto be a good long time installation here and so we dug all the trenches and we got allthe blocks placed. so you can see here these
are the blocks, we got a bed here againstthe wall here just about a foot long so i can just trellis and grow things up but inaddition we have mostly free standing beds and this is what they look like once i gotthe blocks in place, so this is how we got all the blocks.now, if you’re a non-perfectionist which i am not, you can probably set up the blockany old way and fill it up with some dirt and be good and done with it and you got araised bed. you know, unfortunately my mother raised my as a perfectionist so things gotto look right, got to look perfect, i want everything all leveled and all this stuffso i’m going to explain how to do that if you guys want to do that. i mean it’s reallyeasy, just going to take some time.
what you’re going to do here is we got somesand and this was bought in bulk to i just bagged it up into individual bags so it’seasy to work with and carry and all you literally have to do is just you’re going to haveto go ahead and pull a string and you’re going to have to have the good level hereand, you know, you’re going to check the slope and… wow! my property is slopped down;we have to bring up that side significantly. so then all you do is just move the blockaway, lay your sand down, put the block back on and we tap it down and make sure you’releveled and continue to do the next one. now, because i’m severely ocd just doing thisproject and all the blocks would probably take my like a week to finish. i don’t havethe time to do that i got to put out videos
for you guys and all the kind of stuff andlive out my normal life as well. so instead of doing this all myself, which you guys coulddo, i decided to bring in the experts so i got a 40 year brick layer who does this professionallyand he takes side jobs, to level all this out and put this in for me. this is trulyold world craftsmanship. alright, so now i’m going to show you guyswhat my raised beds are looking like after it’s been professionally laid out, leveledand everything. i’m definitely really happy with them. so here are my raised beds, wehave three raised beds that are quite long they’re like 4 feet by like 16 feet andthey’re coming out quite good. we got the irrigation system in and i’m piling thebottom with some inexpensive cheap compost
that i would not recommend if you live invegas; it’s “a1 organicsâ€, i made a video there and actually they requested thati remove it from public view so it’s no longer available and i mean this stuff stinksand i’m not really a big fan of, especially, the bigger problem with me is they just don’twant to be transparent and show people the products that they’re offering, they actuallylimit the information about it and when companies are shady i really can’t recommend themplus the compost stinks. i’ve got to fill up this beds which areactually quite tall so i’m layering it on the bottom level that probably the roots formost plants that i’m planting will not even get down there, so it’s just going to sitdown there, compost further with the earthworms
and all that kind of stuff and hopefully breakdown more because i’m going to put good stuff on and be sure to stay tuned for a futureepisode on my soil recommendations if you do live in vegas.as you guys can see they’re hard at work here, alberto and his team, getting this donefor me and one of the things that i want to say to you guys that, you know, i have sometrust issues, like in relationships… maybe that’s why i’m still single, but alsojust with hiring people to come in to do work because you never know the kind of job thatyou’re going to get. you know, contractor and what not, i’ve just heard some horrorstories about getting ripped off and i’m glad that i found alberto through a friend,through a referral and so i had a solid referral
and i’m using him and he’s working greatfor me so actually if you’re looking for someone to install your block raised bed gardenor any kind of stucco work or even if you need somebody also doing the irrigation bringingthe soil, i mean if you have an empty back yard and you’re not handy, you can hirehim at actually a quite affordable price and he’s going to do great work for you so youcan start growing. let’s see… let’s go ahead and checkout some level on this. check it out here; this is pretty doggone level here, its rightin the middle. now i can’t guarantee that every bed is exactly level like this but,you know what? if i’m looking at this and it looks leveled to me it’s close enoughfor government work, close enough for me because
i’m glad i’m going to be able to walkoutside in the back patio and look at my raised beds all completely leveled, filled up andsoon enough growing with a lot of things that i’m going to be eating.[scene change] alright, so i’m so excited to show you guys my raised bed block garden,this is totally exciting. as you enter the back yard here you can see off to one sidei got a 16-inch wide bed all the way down and it’s two blocks high, this will allowme to grow thing vertically up the wall and i’m going to have to figure out some kindof trellising system, that really cool. and here’s all the raised bed we got one, two,three, four, five raised beds including the wall that a total of six and this is how itlooks, two blocks high. they’ve painstakingly
leveled it out using sand and digging it outin areas and raising it up in some areas so all these beds are the same exact height.you know, this cost a bit more but it was worth it to me because i’m going to haveto look at this every day and this is going to be here to stay, i mean these are concreteblocks it’s not like wood that may rot out and all this kind of stuff. these are permanentso i want to get a good permanent installation that was done professionally because, i mean,yeah i could’ve done it but it probably wouldn’t be this nice and it probably would’vetaken me a lot of time. so we got the irrigation system set up andthis will be actually shown to you guys in another episode, how we did the irrigationand the new aquajet irrigation system that
i’m using. in addition i’m doing kindof a raised bed “hugelkultur†kind of thing. in “hugelkultur†the basicallybury the wood down in the bed and that releases some of the moisture. i don’t have a tonof wood but we had to cut some trees to have access [to this]. so i’m just basicallyburying the wood down at the bottom of the bed and then covering up with compost andthen more compost and my planting mixture. this will basically rot out or compost overtime and degrade, worms will come feast on that stuff and more importantly for me thefungal hyphae will be attracted to the wood and hopefully make their network down below.this is the bed that i did this the most in, the other beds don’t really have any soit’s going to be interesting to see if this
bed grows better than the others, plus alsothis is a cheap filler because good soil here in the valley is actually quite hard to find.so that’s the bed here. this next bed i got it filled almost halfway up and what we’re looking at in here is i put that inexpensive compost a1 organicscompost in the bottom and encapsulated it because if it was not encapsulated it wouldbe stinking right now. then i put some compost for you long time viewers that i got froma friend when she was moving out and we layered that on and i’m still going to have a good8-inch think of the top layer that i’m going to be putting on that is going to be the goodgrowing mix and stay tuned for a future episode on the mixture i’ going to be using. it’sbasically from “vera grown†in north las
vegas.i guess going down this are all the beds, they’re all leveled out and this is goingto be a fun one down here because all the raised beds have basically the race trackaquajet, this is going to allow for maximum oxygenation of the root zone and definitelyfull coverage and i want to try this to see how it’s going to work, this way i’m 100%confident that this will definitely hit all the root zone and get the whole bed wet andkeep everything watered. for fun and giggles we put in a single system, so this is howthe aquajet was originally designed just for a single jet going both directions so i’mdoing one as a tryout to wee what’s the difference in growth between doing a singleor doing a double because this one right back
behind it i don’t have the aquajet in yetbut we’re doing it double and this is the same bed and same basic amount of sun so thisis definitely going to be cool and if that single doesn’t perform well i’ve got itpiped in so i could double immediately because i just think that the dual aquajet is goingto work a lot better. now let me give you a quick heads up, theaquajet is basically a subsoil irrigation system that’s going to save 20% more waterthan my standard drip irrigation that i’m using on the other side plus it’s goingto be really cool to see how much better the plants grow on this side versus the otherside where i have the drip irrigation. i have had some challenges with my drip irrigationin the past and with the aquajet and these
new raised beds i think i’m going to rockit. alright, now we have a special treat for youand i need to give a special thanks to alberto and his crew that hooked me up and did allthis raised bed stuff because i would not have been able to do it in a day like theydid so i’m quite grateful, so let’s meet him.[scene change] so that brings us to the end of this episode as you guys can see this wholejob got done in one day, it would’ve probably taken me like a whole week of doing it hereand there and then being all anal. alberto did an amazing job and he’s available herein the las vegas area if you have a project to put in a raised bed garden in the backyard, any kind of concrete stucco work and
even irrigation, bringing in the dirt. i mean,he’ll set you up i know he set me up and i want to thank him. alberto, thank you somuch. (alberto) ok.(john) and that’ll do it for this episode, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. once againmy name is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com. will see you next time and remember: keepon growing.