Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt, come let we keep planting on a while.

You see the homegrown I said it come from earth.

I say the good food come make me plant me we own.

I say the good food, good food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said I food, I food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, Your food, your food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

Hi, I'm Carlos Robels from the UVI Cooperative Extension Service and welcome to Home Grown.

Today we're going to revisit Alex Randall's place on Water Island.

Remember where he had been to Alex?

Places.

And again, his place is one of those places where if you can grow something here, you can grow something.

Because Alex's place is just full sun, direct salt, dry island.

It's just one of those things where if you think about it as a gardener boy, you, you, you hesitate a bit.

What you're going to see what has happened.

And I'd like to introduce to you the mayor of Water Island, Alex Randall.

I'm not the mayor.

I don't know.

No, just white residents.

That's just my thing for him, because I just know him of being over here in Water Island.

But Alex is glad to be back to see what has happened since we last were here.

Well, Carlos, it's just amazing when I look at this because the last time you were here, these plants are a little into beachy things like that.

And here it is weeks later.

And they've gotten huge and they've gotten huge with just sunshine and water.

It always amazes me the plants.

All you do is add sunshine and water and out comes food.

That's really pretty amazing.

That's good.

And one of the things that we talked about the last time is that for those of you that are challenged, either with your knees or with your back or just some of these, he had his box on a ping pong table.

This ping pong table was destined for the landfill, and now it is serving as a means of growing your plants on top in a way that you don't have to worry about back issues or worry about needs.

Well, you could worry about them if you want.

I don't worry about them all.

This is your box.

You send it over to us right at the beginning and we got the soil and I looked at the whole thing.

I thought if I put it down on the ground, I'm going to deal with the same problems I've always had trying to grow vegetables on this island.

There's so many underground critters that come up, whatever, that if it's up on a table like this, the plants are they're insulated from the world and it just makes everything about tending them.

You find a dead leaf.

It's right here at eye level.

And when you want to pull a weed or something.

That's right.

Right there.

And you can see everybody and see how they're doing and check on them.

I just love having it at this level.

I'm now beginning to think about having more tables because if I have more tables out here in the yard, where else could I put another couple of tables and get more food?

Well, this is just this is a garden.

We're going to see how much we get this time around.

Okay.

All right.

So talk to me about who's going well and who's not going well here.

Okay.

Let's start right up close to home.

Here.

I'm looking at a cucumber vine, and I can see right away that it's been attacked.

Now, these insects, particularly the worms, are caterpillars, would not have called up through the ground some sort of a moth or a fly or a butterfly would have laid the eggs on here.

And I believe we may be able to find one if we looked real careful.

And this is a critter that's eating the leaf.

That's correct.

Part of the plastic, skeletonized in the leaves.

And that's the way it looks like it has all these holes in it.

And there is a very large one there.

Sure, it's a cucumber worm.

Well, ugly looking, a little critter.

And he's eating my cucumber.

That's right.

He's eating all the leaves.

And without the leaves, you won't be able to get food going in, to make more flowers, to make cucumbers.

Even though you do have a flower on here, which is a good sign that it's at least ready to call the bees and say, Hey, come pollinate me so we can make you cup cucumbers.

So what do I do?

All right.

There are several options that you could do.

You can manually since this is small, squish them if you with your hands.

If they're not if you're not that squeamish, like there you go.

Just like that.

Like that.

And they're gone.

But I.

To find each and every one, don't I.

Yes, you do.

These look looking on every leaf.

Right.

So that can be time consuming.

Well there are products on the market that you can get either duster powder that are natural, that you can there be tea products or bacillus bacillus during Genesis and you can put a powder on.

There's a liquid form called through a side that you can spray on the leaves and when they eat it, it makes them sick, it makes them it gives them a stomach ache and they won't eat anymore.

But they don't eat.

They don't hurt the cucumbers for me to eat.

No, they don't.

They only eat the leaves and the other.

If there's a good thing about this, they will not jump and move to any other crop that you have in here unless you're going watermelons or pumpkins somewhere in here and you're not.

But they are host specific.

Some insects only like one plant and these particular cucumber it worms only like one plant.

And that's where they're going to stay there.

Yeah, I'm going to three.

I got brushing them so far.

Okay.

Now you also have to look carefully because there's some smaller ones, right?

His brother.

That's right, his cousin.

And they do call all their relatives and they do have a feast at your expense.

And they will have a feast.

They eat pretty much nonstop.

And so it's something that you have to to jump on right away.

If you see one, you come out every so often and you inspect the underside of the leaves because that's where they start to eat.

So on a leaf, like a new leaf that's coming out and you can see that they've been on most of them.

They start at the bottom and they start scraping away at the bottom before they actually make the hole and begin giving you this skeleton looking.

Now they're losing the leaves.

Carlos, do they lay eggs?

And these little black dots I'm seeing are those eggs of more that is their droppings.

Oh, great.

That's as they eat, they let the stuff out the other end.

Yeah.

And that's another sign because sometimes you don't see what's eating it.

Once you see those little black droppings, you know, they're there.

They're somewhere on the plant and they're eating.

If I kill all of them, will that do it or are they going to keep coming back?

They may keep coming back.

But again, it's who's going to win out eventually, because at some point in time, you will get to a place where the threshold of insects on there is not high enough for it to do, but you have to stay ahead of it the first time.

They don't come back and say, Oh, where are my kids?

Where my worms, I need to lay more eggs.

She lays and they move off and they go, But you take care of them.

You'll be able to get a good crop off of them before they devour the entire.

So this plant, it's not like we have to pull this out of the ground.

This thing can grow.

That's right.

You just have to get on top of the bug.

That's correct.

And take care of that.

Is it does it help to take off the leaves that have been eaten?

Yeah.

Once they get to a certain stage like this one, go ahead and take it off.

Replace.

Yeah.

It'll replace it from a new node either in here or as it continues to stretch out, new leaves will come out.

You told me when we started this with just three little seeds here.

Right?

That's the last time you were here.

There were just three seeds going on the ground.

You said this was going to grow all over the place.

And I've been trying to train them to go that way, Right.

To head over toward the.

And they can grow and cascade off the end here.

But it also can work.

And I notice that you added another apparatus to your box for your beans.

Well, when I planted the beans, I thought they were bush beans.

Okay.

What?

They turned out that they're pole beans and they were looking for a place to climb.

They got those little, little tendril to tendril things, and they started growing up.

So I put some chicken wire and post up here on the box just so that they would have room to grow.

And that's vertical gardening.

You're actually creating more space for yourself to grow things on.

And eventually some of those tendrils and here is what we were talking about, the tendrils, some of the beans have them, the cucumbers definitely have them.

They will wrap on here and they'll guide this all the way up.

The cucumbers will grow up.

Yes, they will.

I always thought of them as being a ground plant, but if they've got something to grow on, they'll go up.

That's right.

And they will grow and they will hang the cucumbers off here.

Now you just have to pay attention because sometimes a cucumber will get stuck in here.

Gotcha.

And it will grow to its normal size, but it'll have one of those Marilyn Monroe figurine kind of waist.

Sounds like it's got problems right in the middle.

We'll just go ahead then, and let this grow up on the wire.

I noticed that if I took the plants, particularly the beans, and just took a leaf and shoved it through the chicken wire, just grate one leaf, that the whole stem would then grab on a chicken wire so that she could use one leaf to give it some direction.

That's correct.

And you can weave it through it and the beans will grow on either side.

Wait a minute.

Something's different.

When we were here the last time I connected our hose to your regular spigot faucet, and.

But I noticed you have another contraption on here.

What did you in?

Well, Carlos, you're a smart man, and you put me on to this idea of drip irrigation.

But I didn't know exactly how to do it.

And if you'll remember, when we were here the first time with the drip irrigator, we blew the end out of one of the parts of the whole tape.

Yeah, under the end because of the water pressure, right?

And that's what led me to think there's got to be a way I can take away the problem of pressure because the kids are going to be trying to turn on the water, right?

So I invented this thing with a bucket and the bucket is hanging from the wall.

It's on a hook.

Okay.

I punched a hole in the bottom and put a little fitting in there.

That's the same size as the drip irrigation.

Right.

And put a little clamp on it and take the hose and poke it into the top of the bucket.

So this is your reservoir.

And what happens as you go from here?

What what happens now?

Because you've added this because, again, this was connected to our hose.

This is your drip irrigation hose going off to the garden.

Right.

And I was having a problem because every time I came out and it was attached to the hose, when I turned the water on, something would blow out on the system was too.

I couldn't control the water pressure on my spigot.

Okay, so this is just a bucket.

This is a paint bucket.

I cleaned it out, Hang it up on the wall with a hook, drove a hole in the back and put a hook on the wall and hung the bucket up and took the lid and made a hole in the lid the size of them, of a of a normal hose.

Right.

And made a little section, a hose to go into the bucket.

So when I turn the water on and it flows through the hose, it fills the bucket up.

Okay?

And when I turn it off, the bucket then drains into the drip irrigation system right into the gut.

I'm sitting here sending out a gallon of water so it goes and fills the well.

From my standpoint in terms of of like the garden up on top of the table, I want to make this easy on me.

Right.

And now all I going to do to fill the bucket is turn the water on.

It fills the bucket up.

As soon as the buckets fall, I turn the water off and I can walk away from this thing.

Right.

And I like the idea that the that the water, it's a measured amount of water.

I can put plant food in the bucket.

Right?

Right.

I can throw some plant food and liquid plant food and it's going to feed the plants and as soon as I can hear it, get to the point where it's about the overflow.

Okay.

And when it gets to a point, just turn the water off and I'm done.

I've water at the plants for the morning.

So twice a day I come out and fill the bucket up and there's a divider sitting here so that I can turn the bucket off and just run the regular hose which runs out in the yard.

If we want to water something else or something.

So I just I'm trying to take your drip irrigation idea and make it easier for me.

That's great.

And you have that opportunity as well.

Once you get into gardening and your to fix it kind of guy, you will see things that would help make your gardening experience a lot easier and a lot more convenient.

Not the gardening itself isn't fun and you don't want it to be a point where you don't have to do anything except watch it grow.

But this is part of the therapy and I'm sure you get some therapy out of this as well, but you also want to make it as convenient as possible so you can grow your own food.

And again, one of the things we talked about with growing in your garden is having time for your garden.

And if you are a very busy person, you can still garden doing little inventions like these.

As you said, he turns it on.

If you put the food in there, you can turn it on, turn this off, it shifts on and he can go on with the rest of his life and his garden is going to get taken care of, at least some of the watering and the fertilizing aspect of it.

Because, as he said, you can mix the fertilizer right in here and it drifts right through the drip system onto your plant.

Speaking of plants, let's take a look at some of the plants that we had started and kind of look at what how they've been growing, how they've been doing.

Let's take a look now.

Okay.

We're going to take a look at the tomatoes.

The tomatoes are actually in flower.

And that's that's amazing.

That means we had a good the having a good start.

They're getting ready to put out the flowers.

I don't see any tomatoes just yet, but that's not.

Hmm.

Interesting.

Well, we'll see that flower his.

Is that so?

Maybe that's going to be the first tomato you get.

That one's ready to go.

Yep.

Good.

That may have been pollinated.

How long?

From flowers to tomatoes?

Generally, once it's flower, it can be ten, 15, 20 days, anywhere within that range from.

And then you start seeing the small tomatoes and then it'll just continue to grow and get to the size that you begin to see that red blush.

And then it's ready to bake.

How long till I'm eating them, Mom?

How about no more than a month?

If it's more than a month, then we have a problem with flowers to tomatoes.

About a month?

Yeah.

Carlos, these two got huge.

They were all the same size when we started.

These two got huge.

They were big stems.

They get lots of flowers.

They're happy.

They're on the drip, irrigator getting water and food.

But the one over here at this end is a pipsqueak.

What happened to this one?

Okay, more than likely something may have happened in the root system because we were all dealing with transplants.

Yeah, and with transplants and having to take them out of whatever container they're in to transplant them here or maybe digging around the root system may have gotten torn.

And if they get torn, they take a little while to regrow once they start regrowing, but then they just sit there until those feeder roots that actually take the water and moisture up grow out and you have enough of them and then they begin to grow up and then spread out just like he's going to end up as big as the other He should, all things being equal, that he should grow and become as big as those the other two.

They just take their time and it's almost like then this one's going to be fruiting if it's a month out.

Well, this would be like two months then.

That's right.

And and you want that because with most of the tomatoes, again, these are probably going to all come in at once and then they'll be through.

But then you want tomatoes.

You want at least have some a continuous flow of tomatoes.

What this allows you now to do is to have some this is the first set of flowers on this.

This should be all things being equal, growing up later on.

So I would say between now and for the next four months, five months, if everything works right, you should be getting tomatoes progressively from this way.

And this would be the last one to give you a tomato, a steady stream of tomatoes here.

Right.

And so is this the time for me to put some seeds in pots now so that four months for the next generation.

Yes.

Because then you can actually you can actually have them staggered every two weeks.

You can have seeds growing every two weeks or every month so that you'll have them in a succession.

So that as one gets to a point where it's it's grown and the tomatoes are getting tiny when they should be, this big, then you could see you could replace that one and put another one in there and start all over again.

Can I grow tomatoes in this box all year round?

All year round?

I mean, I know right now, as we get closer to the summer, there are some heat tolerant ones that you might want to change transition to.

And you can look in your seed catalog or check with the Department of Agriculture because they also transition to heat tolerant tomatoes and then you could grow those during the hottest summer months.

Then once that's gone, then you get back into the other types of tomatoes that can grow during the cooler seasons of the year.

But we can have tomatoes in January here.

Sure.

No, I mean, there's no problem.

The tomatoes aren't sitting here going, I'm not getting enough sunlight or I need to have my you can have them all year round.

And that's one of the good things about being in a sunny side of the island.

The peppers are doing well.

They're getting ready to flower and in fact you have a tiny fruit already developed on this one.

Quick start making dinner, okay?

And then you've have some celery here.

Now, I notice you have quite a bit of celery.

It is a bit warm for celery.

They prefer the cooler times of the year and you have lots of them.

So you're telling me that this little cluster of celery is so many plants, they're all grown on top of each other?

How do I break it up?

Okay, It's going to put the plants back a bit, but you may have to physically take them out or take a trowel and scoop the entire thing out, get a hose and wash the roots off.

Just a minute.

Let me see whether I understand.

Okay.

There you can right up.

Okay.

And do one and you can break them apart.

You can even take a garden hose and water them and take the roots on.

In fact, you can shake it off, just shake the dirt out and leave the roots behind.

Okay.

Then you can begin to see where the fuller plants are.

And there they are.

There's one plant, there's two plants, there's three plant.

I just take this one that's sitting out here and just pull them away from the others.

Guys, it seems brutal Plants will not cry.

Now, if you want to reduce the amount of stress you could add, you could use water, wash the roots off and then surgically separate them because the roots are all intertwined.

And there is one celery plant by itself.

Yes, it had some roots from one of the other plants, but now this will grow a little bit taller and a lot bigger.

Yes, it is a bit warm now.

And these do better during the November, December, January to cooler times of the year and then probably get to be a foot tall.

But it's a little bit warm.

So you may be able to get some things out of once you do what is regular and consistent.

If it begins to peel, then you know, it's a little bit too hot for it.

So now here you go.

You started out with a clump, Now you've got one, two, three, four, and probably another group more celery in there.

There you go.

And just stick them back in the ground.

Right.

Hang on.

And the other one, no water on them.

Are these going to be too close for now?

Because they're it's kind of warm there.

That's going to give you the full production because they prefer the cooler weather.

So you're going to almost treat them like you treat parsley.

Oh, so we're going to eat the grape, the green that's going to leave.

You may not get all that for stuff like that you would buy in the store.

But flavor, the flavor is going to be better than the one that you get in the store, right?

Gotcha.

Well, let me just stick the last of these little guys back in the ground.

The parsley is my favorite here.

I can't go by without just grabbing a little piece and eating it.

Okay.

That sounds to me like I'm never going to end up with a big bush or parsley any way I can.

Now, we can see if these are also an Alex.

There you go.

You've got a couple of plants in here as well.

Oh, so I should break it down the same thing as you did with the celery.

Break this up.

And that happens occasionally in a garden center where you have to put the seeds or if you're doing them yourself, the seeds are really small and it's easy to put four or five seeds in one hole.

So rather than going through one one and taking them out, either you or the nursery person may allow them to just grow up to a bunch of like how it's bunched here and then eventually go back in and then thinned them out and you will have more than one plant.

In fact, depending on how heavy your hand was at the time that you were doing the sowing, you may end up with eight plants and then you could surgically, carefully take them apart.

And then you will have more than one plant that you could transplant needed to a container or to another side of the box.

So am I going to get more parsley if I break it up, then if I have all these plants living with each other, yes, you will get more parsley, number of plants and also the number of leaves, because now the plant would actually get a chance to grow to a larger size and the leaves will actually get much larger.

They don't want to come apart yet because there's so many of them in there that day.

Yep, they're intertwined now.

You've got that one.

I could just estimate and look and see that you've got at least five plants in there.

You just took two out.

This one has another maybe ten, ten plants all bunched together, all messed up.

And what you're telling me, though, is that if they're all here bunched together, that they're not going to grow very well.

You're not going to get the maximum maturity from the plant itself.

You're going to get parsley leaves, you'll get enough to do it, but you can get more and more like bunches.

I just love parsley.

Parsley is one of the best plants there is.

I like the way it tastes.

I like the way it adds in with things like tomatoes.

And I have dreams of making some stuff called pico de gallo.

That's not really done with cilantro.

Okay?

And I like to do it with parsley, too.

I just have dreams of having enough parsley to be able to do that.

Okay, well, now what we just did, you're going to have more than enough.

Well, I want to know.

I'm just sticking them in the ground here.

Tell me, am I doing this too close and making a mistake here?

No.

Generally, when they they grow up, they get to be this way.

They could be a foot across.

Okay.

But even if you have them here at six inches apart, which is give or take six or eight inches, that you have them here, that's perfectly fine.

If you have more space and you want to put them a foot apart, you can put them a foot apart as well.

So you ever heard of square foot gardening?

The concept of square foot gardening, closest parking spheres, Right.

That that's you can do that with this you won't get again if you were to you wouldn't get to be at least a foot wide but you will get celery and you could have all of them I'm sorry, parsley in that area and and that spacing that you have here would give you sort of like using that square foot gardening concept.

Well, I'm just going to stick all these guys in because of all the stuff I'm growing here.

Parsley is one of my very favorites, Tomatoes and parsley.

You're talking about one of my very favorite combinations.

So we'll just give it a whirl, right?

We took that bunch of parsley and we've divided it up and it's all over the place.

We did the same thing with celery.

And again, that's a tip.

If you ever get to a nursery and you're buying celery or parsley, you may look at the price and say, Well, that's kind of a lot for parsley.

But generally they have so many seeds planted in that pot.

What you paid for initially, you're going to get far more than you paid for it.

So just go ahead and by the parsley with a celery.

And I like I said, generally they come with more than one flat in the pot and I just eat the leftovers.

Go ahead, eat the leftovers.

They're healthy and they're good for you.

All right.

Think I said the beets are doing fairly well.

They're growing long.

The young beets themselves haven't developed, but that's going to come in time.

The basil looks great.

The basil looks like he's happy.

Now, if you could get your hand over there, if you can reach in, you can actually make that get a little bit wider by pinching the growing points.

Wait a minute now you got me.

I want to make this plant get bigger.

I this hard to reach right there, especially with the back wall.

Okay.

I wonder if I can get it from the front.

Here you go now.

Okay.

This plant is is good.

It's wide.

But I know you love your pesto, and I know you cooking.

And I know you're going to want more basil.

You can actually increase the width and the amount of stems that are going out on this basic plant by pinching the top off the end point.

The end point.

The top.

Okay.

And this is that top, I'm sure it's edible, but yes, you take the top off what happens.

It now forces all the energy and the hormones.

We're going into this growing point.

What you may not have noticed, but there are two other little stems right there.

So those will grow out and double the ones.

Then you can pinch those and double that.

Should I have done that when it was shorter?

Sure.

And then by this stage, whereas at four, well, I see a foot and a half and maybe a foot wide, if you had pinch them from the start, it maybe got feet wide by two feet high.

So I really should have been pinching it when it was little.

Right.

And then it would be wider now, but it's not too late.

You can start it right now by even going back and pinching these, because if you notice just about where every leaf node is, there is a new set of little branches coming out.

Every leaf is ready to be a new and it's right, it's ready to start out and spread out.

So if you wanted to, you could harvest it back to six inches here.

So I could cut it down, way down, way down to six go right wider.

And then once the new growth starts coming out, you pinch those back and you will get a nice bush and you have more basil than you can shake a stick at more basil.

So each stalk is going to make its own cluster of basil.

But if I take each stalk and pinch it, it turns into two stalks and four and eight and 16.

That's going to end up with just more, more stems, more stems got a multiplier effect.

It just mushrooms and you have a nice wide bush and this can call this stuff as well.

Oh it's just one an aroma.

Okay.

You go across the room and so, Alex, you have quite a bit of things here.

And I really I'm impressed with you're using what you have, using the space that you have, using the ping pong table as a means of helping to grow the garden.

And so far, so good.

Alex, I'm looking forward to seeing your beans growing.

And I'm looking forward to seeing your beets.

I'm looking forward to see how everything works in this garden.

And this is.

This is great.

This is good.

I applaud you.

Thank you, sir.

I don't have to tell you something about those critters.

We'll get the critters over here.

You.

We put this piece of wire in as a support.

I understood the tomatoes needed support.

Yes.

And I went to the store and they had very expensive round cages that they're nice, but they were really expensive.

That's on the high end.

Yeah.

And I went to sea chest and found this is just like little gardening fencing.

Right.

But I'm just guessing now, is this going to work to support the tomato?

Yeah, this will work.

And as it grows up, you would want to use something that wouldn't a breed the stems.

Not a wire type, not a wiretap, but something a little bit softer.

I've seen in some gardens where they use old stockings.

If the whites get a rim or a rip, they tie that around it and because they've already flowered, they're not going to grow much taller than this.

So at least you can get them up to here and they can support the weight of the tomatoes that are going to grow on it.

Cool.

So they should have support.

They should be tied to the to the uprights.

Yes, they will.

I just can start tying them here.

And some people don't do it.

But it's a good practice to have because sometimes the tomatoes are on the ground and they get mold or mildew or some critter may crawl up on it and eat the bottom out.

And we don't want that.

And so far you've been able to avoid those, right?

Sounds good to me.

Good.

Alex, we have had a great time visiting with you today.

I am impressed with how far your garden grow, and I'm sure your family has experienced an epiphany Just seeing this.

The kids just love it.

They come out here and play in the plants and check everybody out and I'm looking forward.

The next time I see you, we're going to be cooking with the results of the garden.

That's great.

Feel good.

Thanks for having us, Alex.

And thank you.

This is Homegrown for the day.

We hope that you've learned a lot.

We've been on Water Island.

And again, for those of you that are physically challenged, this is an opportunity for you to grow under these circumstances.

That's our homegrown show for today.

Thank you.

And we'll see you next time.

Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt, come let we keep planting on a while.

you see the homegrown?

I said it come from earth.

I say the good food come make me plant me we own.

I say the good food, good food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said I food, I food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, Your food, your food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.