Why Watering Once a Day Doesn’t Work for Me - Organic Gardening Q&A

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com today with another exciting episode for you. Today I'm coming at you from my beautiful backyard garden here under my arch trellis made with a hog panel stuff. It's just done extremely well. We got the longevity spinach over on this side. We got the Malabar spinach here and even the water spinach coming out and it's just filled in really nicely. arch trellis has done really well because I basically put up the Malabar spinach to grow up it. Anyways, in this episode we're going to answer your guys' questions. If you guys have a question for me that you would like me to answer, I'll post a link down below to my post tab. Feel free to post your questions there, unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to look over every different video I put up and answer questions that are in the comments, but if you do post your question in the post tab, I may choose it for next month's Q&A. Alright, first question is from Lavinia Harrison3657, hello John, do you have any advice on what to do with olive harvest from a few trees? Also I was wondering your thoughts on juicing radish and is there a variety of radish you prefer for its nutritional content? Thank you. Alright, so let's see, olive trees. So I mean, if you got a lot of olives, you have to process them, I mean you could, depending on where you live, let them sun dry. So like in Vegas, they'll sun dry and they'll get hard and then they'll still be a little bit bitter, which is probably some of the healthy beneficial compounds, although you could just literally pick them off the tree dry and then eat them, they're probably not as flavorful or fun for a lot of people because they have the bitterness in there, but actually I love them like that because that's the least processing you can do, otherwise you can salt cure them, I have salt cured them before, link down below that where you just pack them in salt, that's the easiest way to deal with excess olives, although the best way, if you did want to preserve them, I would do like a lactic acid fermentation or just basically brine, brining them with salt and then changing out the water, you know, every week or so, and then just, so then you'll have them preserved for you, so that's what I'd recommend, and then on the juicing radish, of course, you know, I recommend actually eating the radish, I'm not a big fan of juicing it, it can get hot and spicy, which could have some health benefits, daikons are nice because they're just huge, but I would honestly recommend, you know, those rainbow radishes that are like, you know, like red or purple colored flesh on the inside, because they're going to be, of course, more nutritious, and of course radishes are one of the easiest things to grow because they grow fast. Alright, next question is from John Jacob dash M1U, have you ever used arborist wood chips for your ground cover? My garden is the best I've ever seen and that's the main ingredient, yeah, so you can see behind me, I have basically wood chips as my ground cover here, this is for my pathway, this is not on my raised beds, I don't like mixing in the wood chips on the raised beds because that may suck out nitrogen from the soil because of all the high carbon and they get mixed in, and also too, the wood chips can provide a nice cover for bugs and insects and things, I think it just gets too messy on top of raised beds, so I don't use them in my raised beds, of course, also too, depending on the arborist, depending on where you live, they could be spraying the trees with herbicides and pesticides that then can end up affecting your garden, you know, I know guys in Phoenix that basically got a drop of wood chips and then their trees in that area lost their lives, and it's like, so we definitely want to be careful as gardeners and literally, I mean, what we should do with every ingredient we use in our garden is know the source, know where it's coming from, but yeah, I love adding wood chips to my pathways and then in a couple years they'll basically degrade down, I always layer on new stuff on the top and I can come in and then dig out some of the stuff on the bottom which is then broken down into really good soil. Next question is from Ramos Family Adventures, hi John, we live in Las Vegas near the South Point, this is our first year gardening in our backyard and we still don't have our irrigation dialed in, so irrigation is definitely the biggest factor for your success or failure in my opinion, aside from the plants that you choose to grow in Las Vegas, and the irrigation I learned from the tomato lady, so this is not something that I just came up with myself, because coming from California I would basically water once in the morning and maybe once at night or sometimes just once during the day at all, and then in Vegas because of the extreme heat and of course I changed my watering times based on the season, we're now in September and now I'm going to be cutting back the water because it is getting finally cooler into the 90s and the 80s in the daytime instead of being the 100s, but especially during the peak of the summer or the peak of the heat I water like 3 or 4 times a day, I may water about 11 o'clock before it gets hot to basically give my water, give some water to the plants so that they could cool themselves down on, maybe another hour or two I give them another squirt of water through the drip irrigation system, what happens is we perspire and sweat to get cool, you know the dogs will pant to basically evaporate water off their tongues and the plants do what's called transpiration, so they'll basically take up the water from their roots, move it through all their stems, all up into the leaves and then off the bottom of the leaves they'll basically evaporate the water out of the leaves, this keeps them cool, this is the number one reason why I see plants not make it during the summer because you're not watering adequately, I visited a garden over, or a farm actually, which made me really sad, over in North Vegas, and they're like, oh I'm like how often do you water, you're like oh once every 3 days and everything was dried up there, I'm like, I mean it's great they're saving water but it's really sad that this non-profit farm that took a lot of donations and took a lot of money from a lot of places are really not growing a lot of food and end up selling a lot of food that's imported from the standard agriculture industry to provide people of low income and not the best means food, and it's not local because they choose not to use enough water and they choose not to grow some of the plants that I grow here that are just growing like gangbusters, right, and so that's totally their choice, but yeah so then, and then, maybe a couple hours later, about another 2 hours later I might give them another hit of water. How you'll know the specific time is that you want to look at your plants, right, this longevity spinach is a lot more tolerant of being dry for longer, if you're growing things like tomato plants, they're, I would say, a lot weaker, right, they're a lot more high maintenance, they're going to wilt out, if you start seeing your plants wilt out, that's your sign that you probably already should have given them some water because now they're under water stress, even my plants like the bailey, the bailey, no matter how much water I give them, they always stress out during the heat of the summer and the leaves kind of collapse down despite me giving them water at the proper intervals and then of course they bounce back after the heat, the main heat and the UV of the day has passed and then they're fine. So, you know, I think that's something you really have to experiment with and the other thing is that like not all your plants are going to have the same water requirements and that's where it gets more difficult, where you could have different zones in your irrigation system whether you have a screw in timer that goes on your spigot, I have, you know, ones I have have 4 different zones so I can control them individually, like the ones that go to my potted fig trees, you know, get less water than my standard raised beds that get more water, the ones on the back line, the water has to travel further, gets a few more minutes than my ones closer to the spigot where there's a bit more water pressure. So yeah, I think that's my main tips for you guys, it's just kind of watch your plants, see what they need and try to preemptively react before they do to give them enough water, don't be scared to water several times during the day for short amounts of time, I think I have it going off for like between 5 and 9 minutes each watering session and of course I'm all on the drip system here. Next question is from probaman74, hi John, do you eat, number 1, hot chili peppers and number 2, salt in processed food items, e.g. in Amboshi vinegar, why or why not? I guess we'll take that as the first question, so hot chili pepper, I love hot chili peppers, different kinds of hot peppers, I don't eat too much of them and I don't like the super hot and spicy ones, but I like to add some heat into my food, whether I'm blending a salad dressing or blending it into a soup, when you add some of that cayenne or some of that heat, the capsaicin, then I don't feel as it's needed to add as much salt to the recipe, right, because I'm already getting some flavor that's overpowering from the capsaicin. And then do I eat salt in processed food items, so that's a whole different other topic, so I don't personally use Amboshi vinegar, you know, I know the Amboshi is the fermented plums that they add tons of salt to, so you know, if I do eat fermented foods that have salt in them, my goal is to get the low-salt variety, so I get like a low-sodium miso that has 60% sodium, it's I think by Cold Mountain Organic, 60% less than standard miso does, and I always encourage you guys to look for it, and always, if I am buying something packaged, which is not too often, I do look and make sure the sodium content is as low as possible, and we'll go through all the different products on the shelf to get, you know, the lowest sodium. I think the biggest problem I see like is in tomato sauces, like a lot of tomato sauces have a lot of freaking salt in there, guys, it's not too good. Salt doesn't require nutrients, I prefer to get my sodium from my plants, and I'll like boiler feed in ocean solids that have some salt in there, or sodium in there, as well as kelp and other minerals, but I think there's, you know, people are overeating too much sodium and not getting enough of the other different trace minerals, and that's why I like to use things like azomite to add up to 70 minerals in my garden, also things like the kelp and the ocean solids, you know, I could get up to 90 different minerals, and then which will also give the food the flavor. I think, you know, what people are really craving are the minerals, and we just default minerals to equal salt, but then minerals, they will all give your food some flavor, and when you're getting, you know, nutrient-devoid foods from industrial grown food at the store that doesn't have a lot of flavor to it, because they're using not good growing practices, you know, you're going to be more likely to add salt, in my opinion. Alright, next question is also from ProvoMan74, what are your top three fastest growing and most nutritious and resilient summer and winter vegetables, also which variety of lettuce is the most nutritious in your opinion, thank you very much for all you have done for us to live a healthier lifestyle. Alright, so the fastest and most nutritious and resilient summer and winter vegetables, alright, so we're in summer, so I'll start off with the summer, so fastest growing, I mean, for sure this year, the winner easily is my Malabar spinach. This is the fastest growing, this is outgrown in terms of like vine length, and also of course leaf production, I mean, look at these leaves, they look beautiful, any other vegetable, so I'd say Malabar spinach. Next up, I got to go with the one I'm sitting right next to, the water spinach, that's also a very fast grower, I have a whole wall of the water spinach. The third one, I'm basically going to go with the sweet potato, which is, you know, this is Ipomoea aquatica, and the sweet potato leaf, which you also get the sweet potatoes from, is Ipomoea batis. So those are my top three, if I had to add one more, I would actually look to the back and just go with the Moringa, if you're starting from seed, they start out very slow, but like basically my tree basically loses its top growth every year, but then comes back from the root and some of the trunk that stays alive, and once it starts growing, it grows super fast, but if you're just growing them from seed, they start out slow until they get an established root system. So I did give you four there for the summertime, and of course, I'm always going to tell you the most nutritious vegetables you've got to grow are leafy greens, leaves are where the plant concentrates the phytonutrients, the vitamins and the minerals, although the stems do also too, so make sure, you know, if you're getting a lot of this stuff, you could just break off these young tender stems and the leaves, pretty much just like that, eat the whole thing. I'll tell you guys, my leaves, they don't need any salt because they have a good flavor from all the minerals I'm adding to the soil and foliar feeding onto them. Alright, so top three winter vegetables that fast growing, in my climate zone, right, it gets a bit cold here, but I'm going to tell you guys the fastest top three that I love to grow in the wintertime, number one are the purple mustard greens, they have the anthocyanin content, mustard greens, despite even being cold, they grow really fast, they can also go to bulk pretty quick. Number two is kamatsuna, kamatsuna is known as like a mustard spinach, lots of published studies on that, grows super fast, unfortunately most Americans don't even have access to it, unless you grow it yourself, and number three I would say purple mizuna, I love the look of purple mizuna, it also is a fat grower, and I'm actually really looking forward to putting those three leafy greens in, in my winter garden that I'm going to start planting probably within the next month or so. And then you also ask what's the variety of lettuce that's most nutritious, in my opinion, you know, there's so many new varieties coming out every single day that I'm not aware of all of them, but basically what I'm going to tell you guys is for the most nutritious lettuce you want to get the deepest, reddest head you guys can find, so one of the ones I like a lot is the outredges lettuce, that's called outredges, R-E-D lettuce, I mean there's also other different lettuces as well that are red, so just look up and try to find the deepest, you know, all red leaf lettuce. And I suppose, you know, I've trialed many different, over the different years, and sometimes depending on the genetics of certain seeds, you know, sometimes the lola rosa is a bit more red, sometimes the outredges work better, but, you know, I just grow a variety of them and I eat them all, because I also, you know, we also want to not just focus on a specific one variety, we want to get variations within the varieties, because once again, although I would consider these the most nutritious, especially because of the anthocyanin content, there's plenty of other benefits to all the other different colored vegetables as well. Alright, next question is from Phyllis Osborne, P1P, I keep hearing about oxalates, should I be concerned? Alright, so, that depends, do you have pre-existing conditions, I've gone deep into the science about oxalates, right, our bodies make oxalates that we can detoxify a certain amount of everyday, you know, if you eat extra oxalates on top of what your body is making, our bodies are designed to deal with certain levels of oxalates, naturally, right, and detoxify them, so they are not a problem, some camps out there, diet camps will say it's like the worst thing in the whole world, and yes, if you have pre-existing conditions like metabolic disease, diabetes and all these other things, and you're generally an unhealthy person, it's highly probable that you're not able to deal with oxalates, so then I would encourage you guys to consult your doctor, because I am not one. Me personally, I don't worry about oxalates, right, you know, as a gardener, I'm always rotating and eating a diversity of food, I don't just grow 20 beds of spinach or Swiss chard that are high in oxalates, actually, this time of year in the summertime, I have one bed of Swiss chard that is kind of dwindling, and I basically hardly eat off it, and when I do eat it, I generally cook it, which will then, you know, leach out some of the water-soluble oxalates out of the Swiss chard, also I like to look at traditional cultures, right, traditional cultures, especially over in Africa, right, a lot of the greens they eat are high in oxalates, they don't seem to have a problem, because, number one, they have a bacteria in them that can digest the oxalates, number two, they process the oxalates in traditional methods that then reduce the oxalates in the food before they consume them, and this is what, you know, this is the nuance of gardening, the nuance of eating healthfully, that people just want, I just want what's right and what's wrong, and when you tell people nuance and they got to start thinking for themselves, then they get confused and they don't know what to do because they don't want to think for themselves, I mean, we have chat GPT these days, chat GPT is not always right, but you could ask chat GPT how to best process, you know, foods to reduce the oxalate content if you can't think for yourself and learn all this stuff, so, like, I generally don't like to juice oxalate-rich greens, which would include things like the Swiss chard and the spinach, super high, chinapodiums, also like the lamb's quarter, also high, and super high, actually, is the New Zealand spinach, which actually I don't even like the taste of too much, so I don't, I mean, although I grow it in my California garden, I have abundance, you know, I eat a few leaves here and there, you know, we want to eat, once again, if we eat things in proper quantities, we're not going to have a problem with them if we're in generally good health, right, you don't want to overeat any of any one leaf, you know, if you're growing 20 different leafy greens, don't just harvest only the longevity spinach and eat a ton of that, right, or go around and harvest one or two of each leaves, so I'm getting nutrients and also the anti-nutrients from those leaves and never in too high of quantities, so that's what I'll tell you guys, right, nature is a buffer, I mean, that's the same thing, like, if you're growing a monoculture and you get infected by a bug, it could take out your whole monoculture, but the more diversity you have, the more resilience you have, so I'd say go with diversity in what you're growing and how you're growing it, and also grow, eat a diversity of foods that also, like, you know, protects you against anti-nutrients as well as getting a broader scope of nutrients in your diet. Alright, next question's from SWA17, what's your opinion on predatory bugs like lacewings or ladybugs, I don't know of any other that help get rid of pests, side note, do you have any experience using stone reptiles or bugs to scare away pests, I wonder if they work or just decoration. Alright, so I don't have any experience using stone reptiles or bugs to scare away pests, I do have, like, plastic owls that maybe work for, like, a week or two, and then the birds don't give a flying you-know-what about them, so I would say save your money on the stone things, what I would say put your money into is a beneficial insect, so, like, I'm not a big fan of ladybugs, every time I release them, they seem to fly away, lacewings are definitely better, and the other thing I really like the most, in every springtime, I put out the pods, or the seed pods, put out the seed pods for the praying mannus, so the praying mannus is my favorite beneficial insect that I have in my garden, and the other thing is if you grow certain plants, like, I did an amazing interview with a guy from Rincon Vitova, I'll put a link down below, if you grow certain, you can grow certain plants in your garden that will attract these beneficial insects, so you don't have to buy the beneficial insects, right, so, I mean, certain times of the year, I'll just have tons of ladybugs in my garden, and I don't even have to release them, I mean, that's even smarter than buying them, because now you're wasting your money, and then they're going to fly off, but then if they just show up here, it's great, and I love it, so, also, of course, I've attracted things like pollinators, such as the, you know, mason bees, that I have mason bee houses, and leafcutter bees too as well, which maybe aren't necessarily predator insects, but the other thing I'm going to tell you guys also, too, it's very important, is you want to focus on growing healthy plants. Healthy plants aren't affected, or less affected, by bugs and diseases, right, if you have higher protein content, more complex proteins, right, in your plants, and amino acids, right, bugs can't digest these higher forms of protein, that's why it's very important to make sure you have the best organic soil, and use a lot of the amendments, such as the worm castings, the rock dust, the compost teas, to get these all activated, and even use the insect grass, like actually help make your plants pest repellents, instead of pest attractants, right, weakened disease plants attract more pests, and this is something that all people, unfortunately, do not talk about, so, you know, that's probably the number one way, and of course, there are some plants that are more resistant to pests than other plants, right, my water spinach, my longevity spinach barely ever gets any problems with pests at all. Alright, next question is from 1UncleMick, hey John, I'm thinking about buying a Juara JK400 composter, based on your experience and other reviews, rust is a major problem, what if I use a good car wax periodically, especially on the parts that rust the most, do you think that would help? Absolutely not, don't buy a JK400, people, I mean, I know people that have rust issues, I have, still have rust issues, I'm probably going to start removing them and taking them out of my garden, and just like, getting them to the scrap recycler, because they have been rusting, the issue is not the outside, while the outside does rust, the issue is the composter in the inside, you know, if you're adding things that have like, water content to it, like food scraps, like you're supposed to, add the carbons, all that stuff releases the moisture, it doesn't have enough good venting to let the moisture escape, and then the moisture basically gets underneath the insulation, on the inside of the panels, right, and then the panels rust, so unless you want to take apart the whole thing, and wax it, or do some kind of coating, maybe take it apart and powder coat it and put it back together, maybe that would protect it, but then like, if you own a power coating company, yeah, that'd be great, man, do that, but for the rest of us, man, that'd be, it's totally expensive and just not worth it, so I'd say, don't waste your time, you could try to wax it to the most you want, and it's still going to rust on you, so, I mean, I say go plastic, I'm not a big, the biggest fan of plastic, but the plastic composters won't rust on you, so, you know, the, my favorite one is the Lifetime, I think it's like a 100 gallon Lifetime composter, I think I, I think I put it in my Amazon shop, link down below to that, if you guys want to look up, look that up, but yeah, I definitely don't recommend a drawer, even if the most protection, unless you powder coat it yourself, you know, which would be like, super expensive for most people, unless you own a company that did that, it's just not worth it. Alright, next question's from TheRedFox27, do you have your drip system on different controllers? This is something I'm working on now, trees, number one, garden light water, number two, heavy water, roses, flowers, and bushes, grasses, plus more, adds a lot of complexity to a simple system, but adapts easily. Absolutely, absolutely, I do recommend putting your drip system on different zones, is what they're called, right, and whether you have, like, the standard solenoid valve that you could hook up into an irrigation system, you could have, you know, one valve for each different zone, or one for roses, one for trees, one for vegetables, all these things, you know, I just have this, I have that on part of my garden, but then the other thing I use, I use basically a screw-in water timer that just screws into the hose bib, and then it goes into four different, you know, zones that I can control independently, that's very important, I mean, I haven't seen one with, like, five, but if you need five, then you want to get basically, you want to get a splitter off your hose bib that goes into two, and then once you split it, then you could have two, four, you know, two, basically four valve controllers on each side after you split it, right, and the most important thing I recommend is not running any particular zone at the same time as another one, because, once again, when you open one zone, the water pressure drops, and then you try to water on another zone at the same time, it's not going to be good, because you're going to have too much of a drop on the water pressure, then your plants are not going to get watered. So I highly encourage everybody to always have a controller that has different zones, because some plants will always take more water than others, especially trees take a lot less than vegetables, perennial vegetables tend to take a lot less than annual vegetables, I mean, these are just general rules of thumb, and then you just got to observe your plants to see if the plant wants more or less water, so absolutely, I definitely recommend that, and links down below to my Amazon shop, where I share the controllers that I use myself personally. Alright, we're down to the last question, from Chip Robinson 5847, question coming, but first, thank you for introducing me to Juan Escaveria, through your videos after three years of planting, we are moving to Puerto Rico from Florida this month, and going to start a cacao for a living, start growing cacao for a living, that's great, man, hope I could visit you if you're somewhere local to me when I'm down in PR, and it says we've taken so many lessons from you, Stephanie in PR and Tim Armstrong in Jacksonville, Florida, at an amazing place called Eat Your Yard, my question, would you consider doing an episode with Tim about persimmons, maybe even his persimmon festival on his modest little property have been re-teaching all of us to grow and eat from our yards in the city. So the answer is absolutely, so I'm actually going to be down at this year's 2025 persimmon festival, I think it's like beginning of November, in Jacksonville, Florida, I think this may be my second time ever in Jacksonville, Florida, and I'm going to be speaking at his persimmon festival as well as making videos with Tim about persimmons and maybe a few other topics, as well as visiting other farms in the area, and it's going to be a great time, so definitely hope to see you there, Chip, and meet a lot of people, and also share the wealth of knowledge, and also for me, it's going to be amazing to eat persimmons grown in Florida for the first time in my life, and also get to connect with everybody out there, so yeah, I'll post a link down below to the persimmon festival that Tim is putting on, I really hope to see you guys there, and I'm looking forward to visiting and learning more about growing in a different climate zone 9 than I'm used to here in the desert, or there in my northern California place as well. So that's pretty much it for this month's Q&A, if you guys enjoyed this month's Q&A, please be sure to give this video a big thumbs up, also be sure to share this with other people that can help them become a better gardener from the knowledge I've learned over the many years of organic gardening myself, also be sure to click that subscribe button so you don't miss out on my new and upcoming episodes, I'll be coming out here 5-7 days, you're going to learn where I show up, what you'll be learning, I've got a lot of cool episodes coming up for you guys, and make sure you click the bell so you get notified as many of those come out, also be sure to watch past episodes of our wealth of knowledge, over 700 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teach you guys all about how to grow your own food. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time, and until then, remember, keep on growing.