hey guys Nigel over here and football Katja pan and today I want to show you how I'm making my grow bags for my garden like this behind me here it's really easy to do I'm gonna go over some of the basics and the principles of why I do what I do and you know if you're using grow bags you might want to follow this tweak it it's like a recipe for food you know you might want to add a little more of this a little more of that depending on what kind of roof garden you're growing I'm primarily doing peppers back here so you know I need a lot of magnesium and a lot of calcium a lot of those kind of things but yeah let's get started enough of my yapping let's see exactly how we can make a really good grow bag okay the first thing I have is this old ratty bin used maybe a couple of seasons potting soil it's still got some rocks in it it's been sitting in this bucket for about a year actually and I'm gonna put it to good use you can use any type of potting mix soil and what I'm gonna do is sort of amend it and add some ingredients the first thing we're gonna be using is vermiculite it's great for retaining water and especially if using grow bags you need that water retention inside the bag next I'm gonna be using cow manure you know what I like to do is buy the cow manure and let it sit on the side of the house for a couple of years we had a bag I swear to god it was absolutely beautiful it been sitting there for about two or three years so that's a bit of a gardening secret you know by the manure let it sit an age and it won't look like this at all it'll be beautiful Brown almost broken into much finer pieces this is new cow manure so you can actually see you know the bark and all the things they've been eating like twigs and things like that so again you might want to use aged manure versus this one which is probably quite new the next thing I like to add is a calcium based shellfish and what this is all my friends know I love this stuff it's basically ground-up moistures and different types of shellfish and this stuff is amazing I don't know if you can buy it in your country but it is a beautiful powder of I believe calcium and magnesium and this is one of my best things I like to add the next thing is a fertilizer and I'll come around the other side here and this is what is this for for free fertilizer but what it primarily is is fish pellets I mean you can't smell this but I can smell it from here right now this stuff is nasty it is really really really good stuff it's got aminos minerals and vitamins it is awesome good stuff to buy heavy heavy fish pellet this one kind of been adding this it's just a basic little bag of fertilizer again it's full of minerals fish bass more minerals again I just add a little bit of this to the bottom of the bag it's not gonna hurt it it's used for you know basic gardening in Japan and the last thing I like to do is the Larry hole method I add some fertilizer near the top so when the plant first starts to grow it'll hit some of these little pellets towards the top house and I've got my basic grow bag right here alright let's put a grow bag together and see how it looks okay let's get started first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna look at the soil I don't see any vermiculite in the soil whatsoever I'm gonna start adding some of the vermiculite I believe you want about 33% or 1/3 of the soil to be vermiculite alright that's looking pretty good as I start to mix that around that looks really good it gonna go in with the manure I'm not too sure exactly how much you should always be adding you know I like to add for this amount of soil you know gonna add about four or five good handfuls of this good smelling stuff and to give this a bit of a mix and one thing you like to do is add a little bit of water the water is good for grow bags because when you start to add your soil and after time the grow bag will the soil will start to sink in the grow bag so if you don't have the water your soil will will significantly decrease okay so that's looking pretty good there you know for the sake of the video I'm not gonna mix it too much but that looks pretty good okay so we got a nice soil base there that's looking perfect you got your girl bag like so open it up take some soil now what I like to do is I like to add about mm one-third of soil this mixture okay and what I do is I take about this much of the calcium oh sorry of the what is this stuff against Jorge the shellfish powder mixture and I like to just mix that in the bottom half of the bag a little bit more just a little bit more and then I take some of this this nice fertilizer that I showed you before it's got some minerals and some fish a little bit of everything in there and I just like to mix that up okay that's looking really good whoo nice smell coming from that give the bag a bit of a thump and add some water to it looks good fill in the sides of the bank you know these grow bags they kind of need to be pushed to the sides to form the shape of the bag okay take a little bit more of your soil there keep going to about halfway we're looking good it's about half full now okay looks good and then give it a small push not gonna pound it but I'm just gonna push it on the sides I'm trying to fill out the side of the bag take some of that arrow just a little bit of the air out you know I just I just don't want the whole soil at the sink after a month or so okay a little bit more water perfect yeah now I'm gonna add some of these fish pellets and just put a couple in there like so you don't have to mix it too much okay okay we're gonna add more soil again more soil you know you're constantly moving the soil putting some air in there you know trying to fill the bag out at the same time I'm using my fingers like this I'm not pushing straight down I'm using my fingers okay this is looking pretty good I'm not about the three-quarter mark now of this bag that's perfect I love it great okay what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this beautiful Anaheim 64 plant this is the last of my growing and I really wanted to make this video to show you you know how I've been doing this this plant is looking really good the roots are coming up through the bottom she's done she needs to go into her new home okay just gonna make a little little hole there just fill it up just a little bit of water not too much okay we're gonna put our plant in there like so that's good gonna put some of this fertilizer here just a little bit and I'm just gonna put a ring now you might be asking yourself why would you put it near the top well the theory is is this plant is actually as I put the soil in it's actually going to start to create roots right around here and those roots are gonna hit that fertilizer so that's gonna really benefit the plant at the beginning here at the beginning stages and also as it gets wet and rainy slowly those nutrients are gonna seep into the soil so it's a bit of a time-release thing Larry Hall he knows all about this man and what you want to do is the bottom leaves just chop those off you don't need them okay let's continue more soil again keep going one thing I noticed with the grow bag users or you know the Walmart bags or whatever people are using is they fill the bag like halfway full maybe maybe three quarters man go all the way you know you gotta push this plant man you gotta go all the way to the top of soil here you don't want to go chintzy on this okay we're looking pretty good here again I'm not pounding it hard but I'm just giving it soft pass okay that looks really good I'm loving that sounds like a McDonald's commercial alright that's pretty good there now you have a little option here if you want to do this you can put some mulch on the top mulch can be you know various things like pine needles I believe bark and stuff sometimes I use rice husks from some of the Japanese farmers I kind of hate the rice husk because as soon as it gets windy the rice husks are flying around everywhere I think peppers really like the pine needles so you can do that if you want I'm not really mulching because mine are all covered and I have absolutely no problems with the watering issues and whatnot but there you have it last thing you want to do I'll probably do it back here is I can't do it on this table here but you just give it a slight lift in pull lift and drop basically and what that does is it just settles the soil down a little bit more again don't push hard at the beginning I did I pushed it kind of you know nice and tight but towards the top I'm not going to push it and there you have it folks that is the perfect grow bag pepper plant ready for the 2016 season I hope you enjoyed this I think you know grow bags I absolutely love them I've been using them for years now and I just love them over the planters and there you have it that is a perfect perfect plant you guys have any questions or comments please leave them below I will do my best if you have any tips please hey send it along I know I'm not perfect but over the years this is what I've learned and thanks for watching guys please rate subscribe first it's really simple guys you just take your grow bag and you know get a large bucket like this and they will absolutely go crazy in this type of system