6 Plant Combos To Try In Your Raised Beds

What's up everyone. Kevin from Epic Gardening here. One of my favorite things about being a YouTuber, being an Instagrammer, just having a lot of stuff out there in the world and connecting with other gardeners from around the world is the fact that you get to see what everyone else is growing when you can't grow it. And what better example than that than one of my absolute favorite gardening YouTubers, Mark over at Self Sufficient Me. He's living down under right now. He's in Australia, which means it's his winter moving into spring in the next month or so. So we thought we'd do is do a little collaboration. And in typical Self Sufficient Me style, we're giving you our six different types of plantings that you can use in a raised garden bed. So we're going to kick it off with me, but then we're going to go back and forth between Mark and myself just sharing some of the different things we're growing and some tips for each of those plants. We're in winter here now, so it's quite cold and it's too cold for corn but not in the USA. So let's throw first to Kevin where he's going to talk about some silver queen that he is growing. Thanks Mark. I figured why not kick it off with a classic summer bed of corn, eggplants and onions. So this corn here is silver queen. I've planted in blocks, three rows, four corn per block because corn is a wind pollinated plant. You can see it's already starting to produce some tassels here. Once those ears really coordinate with the tassels, then I may even go ahead and do a little bit of hand pollination. And it's just so easy being six foot four or 195 centimeters. It is really easy for me to stand and work in a bed even though corn grows pretty tall. That extra 15 inches on the birdies bed really does help out. But that's not all I have going on in this bed. In the front of the bed here, I've got a couple Ichiban eggplants on each side. So two here, two there. You can see we have some gorgeous flower production already and a couple onions in the front just to round it out. And Mark, before I toss it back to you, and I hear you have some epic potatoes for us, just one more note on this bed. So here in the Northern hemisphere South, this direction here is our best direction for sun access. And so what I decided to do, which I would recommend everyone do is plant your taller plants on the North side of your bed and plant your shorter plants on the South side. Because the last thing you want to do is block access to sun. These eggplants, these onions, they want a lot of sun just like the corn does. So the last thing I would want to do is plant the corn in on the South side and plant everything else on the North side. All right, back to you. Let's hear about those potatoes. Nice eggplants mate, but check out my potatoes. Whoa, look at this. Hey, what an amazing crop. What a fantastic specimen. They are loving it in this raised garden bed here. And this is one of the best and easiest ways to grow potatoes. I guarantee it. What I love about these raised beds is that they're so easy to manage. All I've done here is left this garden bed sink down a little. And then when I've prepared the bed, I haven't filled it up totally. I've planted the seed potatoes down probably a good, maybe 10 inches. And then I've covered it over and I've left plenty of space in the top of this round raised garden bed for me to be able to backfill as the potatoes are growing and check out the progress. This is going to be one bumper crop. I'm looking forward to bringing you how to grow a ton of potatoes. And you know what else? These are flowering. This is some of the best flowers I've ever seen on potato plants. And you know what flowers do? They attract pollinators. So let's buzz back to Kevin to chat about pollinators. Epic potatoes, Mark. But I don't know if you knew you were talking to the potato master. All jokes aside, I've got a little pollinator bed going on here in kind of my back section of my front yard garden. This used to be a bean and peas bed and I quickly switched it out to get a little bit more friendliness for my hoverflies, my bees, all of my beneficial insects and pollinators. So the way I decided to do that was a mixture of a classic herb that we all love, basil, and then some annual flowers that I started from seed. So one of my favorite varieties in this bed is this African blue basil right here, which can be perennialized in my warm climate. So that's going to be a great all year pollinator. I have a Pesto Perpetuo basil here, a Greek Yavani, a Greek Columnar and a Thai basil right there. And then I've gone ahead and planted some flowers I started from seed. You've got all sorts of different flowers, Cosmos, Zinnia, Akilla. And once this bed really fills in, it's going to be a gorgeous bed for those pollinators. I gotta be honest. Sometimes I can undervalue the pollinators because I have such small space, but I finally bit the bullet and dedicated an entire bed to my pollinators. I may not even harvest much of this basil for use in the kitchen, just preferring to give my pollinators a little bit more love. And speaking of pollinators, Mark, let's hear about those blueberries. Thanks Kevin. And you know how much I love my pollinators. You can never have too many great stuff. And without pollinators, this birdies bed of blueberries just wouldn't be happening. We're still a good month away from spring yet, but these blueberries are already starting to flower and form fruit, which means they're very happy here in this round raised garden bed from birdies. And you know what? The key reason is that I planted them in here, not just for easy management and grouped them together so they can cross pollinate because these are different types of blueberries. But one of the main reasons is blueberries like a very acidic type soil, different to a lot of other fruit and veg. So instead of trying to grow them in a location where they might not quite like it, I've given them their own round raised garden bed so that they can be all nice and happy with their specific soil type. Other veggies and plants probably wouldn't grow very well in this soil mix, but blueberries are on their own with their own soil, happy as. See, you can just about grow whatever you want in these raised garden beds. Speaking of whatever, let's go back to Mr. Epic Gardening and see what he's growing in his whatever bed. Couldn't agree with you more, Mark. Blueberries are a wonderful container plant. I don't have mine in a birdies bed, but they're doing quite well in this acidic soil mix in these large terracotta pot containers. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about my whatever bed. So this is the whatever bed. And this is a bed that I didn't even know I would be able to fit in this space. So first of all, let's take a look at the dimensions of the bed and then we'll crack into what this plant is and what I've got growing down below. First thing you might notice about this bed in comparison to the corn bed we saw earlier is that it's a different shape. So this is 0.6 by 1.8 meters or around two by six feet for those of you over here using the imperial system. And you might be saying, well, this bed is clearly different than this bed. It's actually not. Well, all I did is I took the panel out of the side here and added it to the side here. So we just created a different dimension. And it's really the only way I could have slotted a bed into this very thin patch of my garden. First thing you'll notice is I've got some rosemary and thyme on this edge of the bed with some beautiful herbs. And then I have some pineapple sage as well as oregano down here. So both edges of the bed are a little bit herby. And I will say pineapple sage is a beautiful variety both for prolificness. It grows like crazy. This is actually coming somewhat near the end of its useful life. It's also a great pollinator plant. So in the middle of the bed, I actually have a bit of a strawberry patch going. So these are some everbearing strawberries that have been producing throughout the spring and summer. They've slowed down a little bit, but they will start picking up again. And then I have a really random and whatever plant in here, which would be longevity spinach, which is not a true spinach variety, but it's a great heat tolerant green here in the summer here in San Diego, which it's hard sometimes to grow greens. But the piece de resistance, Mark, is the luffa gourd. Check this out as we move all the way up my garden arch. So the luffa, like I said, my favorite plant in my whatever bed. And it's growing all the way up this garden arch, which actually chains over to another birdie's bed right here. And just a really fun plant. There's a lot you can do in a birdie's bed or really any container garden just to show you this was a really random one. And there's some great suggestions from you as well, Mark, the blueberries, the potatoes, et cetera. So thanks. Looking forward to seeing what you got going on this winter. Well, there you have it. Those are six different types of plantings that you can put in the exact same type of raised bed. You can go low pH and do some blueberries or things like that. You can do whatever, or you can hang out and do some corn like this gorgeous corn that I have going on right here. And one more thing, Mark and I have kind of formed a little online friendship, a bromance, if you will, and we're collaborating. I've brought the Birdies brand to the United States. For years, these beds have not been available in the United States. And not only have I brought this model, which is the 15 inch tall model, I've brought a double tall, the 30 inch tall six in one bed. And it's called six in one because like you saw in my whatever bed right here, that's just one of the six different ways you can configure these panels. So one bed can be customized to six different dimensions. So for people who are fans of Mark over at Self Sufficient Me or me here at Epic Gardening, I'm actually offering 5% off your whole order. If you use the code SSME2019, 2019. So if you're interested in these beds, which have been selling out like crazy, I've actually ordered even more, then go ahead and use that code. It helps Mark out a little bit. And it helps me out because it helps me get the capital to bring even more of these beds into America. Some different models, some different designs that you guys really like and really want. And also some ones that I want as well. So thanks again Mark for collaborating with me on this video. I hope we can do some more in the future. And thanks to all of you for watching and supporting both Mark and myself and just organic original content creators here on YouTube because it's your watches, your subscribes, your likes, and your support in however you decide to support that allows us to do what we do in bringing you this type of stuff. And even getting a little crazy and bringing you stuff like these Epic raised beds. So until next time, I'm going to take a little moment of peace here in my garden as the sun starts to set and I will see you on the next video. Don't be jealous.