Today's episode features brand new guest, Josh from yellow skunk farms. He's created an ecosystem in his garage, and he's going to teach you how to do it, or at least how to make your garden a little more bio diverse. Check out yellow skunk farms on Instagram to see more of his work. Growcast.com to see all of our work and all the archives and AC infinity for all your grow gear needs, use code grow cast, one five. Hello podcast listeners. You are now listening to and watching grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today. Go to growcast.com there. You can see all of the episodes on video. Get the entire archives up there, plus our seeds, our membership, our classes. It's all going down@growcast.com make sure to sign up for the newsletter. Got some big giveaways going down in there. Today, we got a brand new episode, brand new guest, very excited to speak to Josh from yellow skunk farms. Today we're talking about biodiversity. We're talking about what could be the most beautiful garden on Instagram right now. So let's bring on our guest. Let's waste no time here. What's up? Josh, how are you doing? Man, thank you for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. So listen, I saw your garden on Instagram. Absolutely fell in love, as 1000s of people have. We'll get into all the biodiversity and your build out and all that in just a second. But for the first time viewers and first time listeners. Can you talk a little bit about yourself? How'd you get started growing? How'd you get started in cannabis? And then, how'd you get started on this crazy biodiversity project of yours?
Man, well, Virginia, six acre, small farm, so not really farm.
About three years ago, got married here three years ago and creamy trees, Christmas trees and a variety of different things. That's kind of where it all started,
around there, but it was a I really like
little break here, it's always been My go to alcohol, a little alcohol for there that was a little too, little too rough, 2020, shit. I found future cannabis project from the air. I found Lake Morrison. I found soil food web. Market was growing. I found Brian,
all these people that were in this natural farming unit. They were pushing okay at first. I did start off in pots 30, and then I had a four by four in here, and I realized real quick that I had, I was sitting on a gold mine. Once I realized what they were talking about when it came to sand, silt and clay. I didn't understand what they were talking about at first. Everybody kept saying sand, silt and clay. And this is what Layton was pushing. And he's like, if you don't have it in your soil, you don't really have living soil. You don't have a true the structure of so you stick a shovel down in the ground. You don't have peat moss. There's no peat moss out here. There's no There's no per light out here. There's none of this stuff out here. I get that it's growing in pots. Is what you need, aeration you need. You need to grow in a potting mix. That's what it's called a potting mix. But to when you but if you're doing something, like, what I'm doing, like, to really take it to the next level, you need size. Like, that's the end result here is you need space. You know, these things need a home. So you got to treat it like every little species needs a home. I had an issue with Roly polys in the four but everything I had done Roly polys were taken over. All right, that was my biggest issue. I was just like, holy, these things, the little gray one, the rubber. Like isopods. You know, they're isopods, but they're little gray little bastards. You know, the little roll ups that you find breaking down this wood. If you go outside, you lift up a rock, you lift up a log, boom. There they are. By the hell they're
they're great for that, but they can also get out of control, you know, you let those isopods boom, and you better not put in any young plants, anything that's not like, really hard and off, anything that's slightly tender, those isopods will gobble it up. But Josh, you make a really good point, because there's the differences between indoor living soil setups and planting outside in the ground. There's a big chasm between those two spaces. There's so much that goes on when you plant into solid soil, into the earth, and then there's the indoor living soil system, like the one that I run, which is also good, but very, very different. And it has to do with the amount of diversity. Like you said, there's kind of a chasm there. Your Garden has bridged that gap. That's really how I'd like to start this off, which is, you have done the best job of taking that I've seen, of taking outside and putting it inside. I mean, we'll just show it off here for the audio listeners. I do recommend you go to growcast.com/episodes, just so you can see this. But you built out a stone foundation with a like a pond river type thing here. I know I'm probably misspeaking. I'll get you to explain this. We're looking at turtles swimming by. We're looking at fish swimming by different weight, multitude of different types of plants. You've got different species of cannabis, different cultivars of cannabis growing in here. This is just crazy. It's breathtaking. What we're looking at here, and that's really what you've done, I think, Josh, is you've done a better job than anyone else I've seen at trying to take the massive complexities of outdoor in ground, real growing in an ecosystem, and bring it inside a room. So I just want to say, great job. And I think that's kind of what you're doing here is that, is that a correct assessment?
I appreciate that. That's, that's exactly what. Yep, you hit the nail right on the head. That's where I was going with the whole idea in my head. This was planned out, you know, not overnight. This took, you know, years, but the idea of, you know, I had, I've had, like I told you, I had the koi pond outside of being my granddad built, you know, 23 years ago. So I've always had that outside of, always, when I've come over here, I've always gone and gravitated to that koi pond. I've always maintained it. I got, I just recently got rid of, well, before we moved in here, I got rid of the stuff. It was 120 gallon saltwater aquarium, and it had the sub tank. You know, you had your sub tank underneath your aquarium, and that's where really all the life is. You know, you have your beautiful fishes, but when you open up that cabinet underneath, that's what's eating all the that's what's really cycling the biology. You know that Aquatic Biology through the tank. You know, you never take all of it out. You only take some of it out. This is why you only do a partial. You know, water change. You know, once I realized that water changes in an aquarium do everything. You know. They fix everything, as long as what you're replacing with is has the right mineral in it. You know. You know you're not replacing them with dirty water. You replace them with fresh, clean water, and that usually fixes all the problems that I ever had in an aquarium setting,
the growcast Grand fino Hunt is back for round three. We're doing it again. Everybody powered by high grazyme. This is the coolest contest in cannabis cultivation. We look through all the Grow cast members gardens as they hunt through their Pheno hunt seeds, and we select a whole bunch of prize winners and one grand prize winner who walks away with $1,000 cold hard cash. Thank you to high Graz, I'm so all you got to do is make sure you're in membership. Go to grow cast.com/hunt to see all the details of the hunt. Basically just have six plants vegged up and sexed up and ready to go by. November 1, we all flip into flower. November 1, we update our progress in the grand fino hunt chat and we and rich go and personally visit the top three finalists. I actually just got back from visiting round two's finalists. It's amazing meeting these growers and getting to enjoy their phenotypes with them, and really get to see who got lucky and got that unicorn. So once again, grow cast.com/hunt, make sure you're in membership. That's grow cast.com/membership, what are you waiting for? Just jump in there. Anyways. You get the garden support. You get the content. You get the grand fino hunt. I'd love to see on the inside, make sure you're in there by Halloween weekend. We're all flipping to flower grow. Cast.com/hunt, grow. Cast.com/membership, and huge thank you to high Graz, I'm for powering the grand fino hunt. Best of luck hunters. Someone's winning 1000 bucks.
Because once I learned Marco had won a Grand championship up here in DC in like 23 I think it was, was his divine time. I was like, okay, these things can do. These plans can handle a lot more than what people think. I mean, people are delicate. They think these things are babies, you know, and they want to be done. And it's true in some cases. But the ones that you want are strong and deal with a lot of stress and can produce some killer cannabis in the right conditions. That's
that stress is important too, right? I mean, that goes back to the outside growing. There's a lot of stress. Lot of stress outside. And it's kind of like that old meme with, like, the dog that's like, all beefy and buff, and then the dog that's all sad and like, weak, and the beefy buff dogs like outdoor plants. And they're like, oh, this concrete is cozy. Sad dog is like, the sad dog is like, indoor plants. And it says, like, is this tap water dechlorinated? So it's really interesting. It's
a different animal, you know, it's a totally different and then once I realized that, you know, the technology and the lighting has gotten so that I can adjust, and I was like, okay, all right, now we can really play, you know, with some stuff. Now, I just got these grand masters, you know, that's got these forward channel I can adjust. And I got daylight. I got sunrise, sunset. I've got, you know, 90 different presets that I can play with. It's
crazy tuning. You do all that to mimic nature in this place.
Yeah, you can do that. I haven't quite figured it like I burnt the land race. Like, you know, that's why the land the big, big land race that everybody's been looking at, yeah, that big, that thing would right there where we're looking at, I burnt it out of that thing, you know, just, you know, I didn't know any better. Wow,
jeez. I mean, again, for the audio listeners, we're looking through this garden, you've got massive plants growing out of what is essentially a pond. I mean, you're pulling out like algae that's present. There's little snails, it appears.
Yeah, I got shrimp in there, clams, crabs.
Yeah, there's problems. Have you run into here? I The two highlight intensity is fine. I mean, people make very, very powerful and efficient LED lights. Now you said you got the Grand Master level, so that's, I mean, that doesn't surprise me. A lot of times we're not hitting 100% just because the lights are so good, right? And it's better to run them on a lower percentage anyways, because they last longer. So like, lighting aside, though, have you run into any issues with like, I love that laugh. What have been some of the hurdles for having all of this biodiversity?
All right, let's, let's start from the beginning. First, it's, it's all based on, on layton's horizontal soil system. And once I realized that I had what I needed, what he was talking about, because I live on a freshwater reservoir. Okay, so reservoir is, you know, basically drinking water that the state or the city of Newport News has designated for drinking water, and they pump it out of this basically big ass pond. Okay, so I live in the tide water area over surrounded by rivers and oceans only, you know, 30 minutes away, and so I have a lot of sand, silt and clay in my but also have that Aquatic Biology that's in that reservoir. So as you, if you, if you were walking up out of the reservoir, and you were coming up onto the beach, so to speak, that's what I'm talking about. That's the sand, the silt and the clays. You can't really see the clay unless you you need a microscope almost to see the clays. Clays are so fine and particle size. They're the smallest of the particles that I'm going to find in that, in that in right on that edge of that reservoir, that stream, so to speak. So where I'm getting it from is a heavy, thick, organic layer on top. So that's where this stream comes out of the ground. And all the trees and everything had just been falling on, you know, however long, 1000s of years. And right where that stream pushes out of the ground, I noticed that it was clean like and I stuck my fingers down there, and it was clean sand, silk and clay, but everything around it just just far enough to where that was pushing out, just had enough force to push that organic matter out the way, so to speak. You know what I'm saying. But underneath that was just as clean as it could be, fresh sand, silk, if I didn't stink, I was like, light bulb went off. That's when. Eight. And whole idea of like, look, take this sand, silt and clay, and lay it out on, on, on a tarp, or, or if you have an asphalt driveway, which is what I have, I laid I spread it out all over an asphalt driveway, let the sun cook it out. And in the summertime, it don't take long, you know, nine couple 90 degree days, and it's, it's cooked, as long as you're turning it a little bit and raking it out, and then I shovel that all up. And that's, that's what I'm using for the bottom of my pond. So indoors, that's, that's the layer that big sand. So all that sand clay, but I've cleaned it. I basically composted it with the sun, cleaned out all that funk that that swamp smell that you're going to get from all that organic matter that's already in it, you know what I mean? So you got to cook all that out. So my first issue now, we're getting to the to that sand silk, that's where everything started, so I got cobblestone, so I lay flat. It's got confined cobblestone like you would walk on in a city, yep. All right, that goes on first, then we pour pea gravel all over top of that. Okay, sure. Then the pea gravel comes the sand, silicon clay. Then on top of that layer comes the little bit of red clay. So that's where the red clay comes in. So you have to have this clay. This clay is where it's going to give us the regeneration, because it's so rich and mineral and nutrient that four inches, that's the money, you know, that's where we need to be, and that's what takes a little bit of time to build in a system, you know, like this. So that's where we're headed. But the biggest problem that I had was water retention. So like, how was I going to get the water to because that was the whole idea in my head, was, how do I make this regenerative? But how do I also not have to water the plants? I don't want to have to water my plants, you know. So how do I get them to wick this? To wick the water up. I put some of this saying, so if I in a bucket, of course, I've been constantly bringing it up in a bucket, and I noticed that once I dried it out and put it back in a bucket. I hit it with some water, and it just took it, man, it just, finally, it absorbed it enough to where I was filling up the bucket. I was like, damn, I must have put 15 gallons of water in a five gallon bucket. I was like, that's, that's how I that's what I can put in the creek if it, if it holds that amount of water, and it wicks that amount of water. So I laid it out on a table, a little bit of dry stuff out on a table, and I put a rock, and I filled and then I just poured water on the table, and the water ran to it, and I watched the water just that, that sand silk. It just wicked. That one just right on up on top the rock, you almost kind
of described like a gradient. You know what I mean? Because, because you're dealing with these different ratios of sand, silt and clay, which is what all soil is a different ratio of those things. But really, in the center, like you said, is that loam, and it sounds like that's what you're dealing with on your property. It sounds like that's really what you're harvesting. And like you said, when you when you have these different ecosystems that butt up against each other, there's this like gradient across it as you approach the beach. I think you said where it's going to be more Sandy, there's this gradient there that slowly changes. The structure is that what you planted the your can of plants straight into the soil.
I make my own, IMO, three, four and five. But I purchased the soil already made from a local person here who's actually a school teacher. Big worm organics, and I found him through Marco, because Marco lives here in Virginia as well. All these guys live here in Virginia that I deal with, and because I try and keep it local, if I'm going to spend the money, you know, so and the reason I start with a premium soil is because that's where I want to be, you know, when I put in fresh cannabis plants is I want them to have that initial because, like I said, it's going to take time for me to build. So my whole idea is to start off with the good stuff. I amend it, but then never really have to amend it again. Just my IMO, with rabbit, I have rabbit that we have here on the property. So my worm castings, lot of ferments. So we're in the process of our two years on our FAA bucket. We're coming in on about a year on mostly everything else. But I just started doing fig ferments. We've got a big ass fig tree this year. So. We've got figs breaking down right now. I've already done the fig leaf, so we're doing the figs fruit now. I've got some over there. It's pretty
I'll show you. That's cool, though. Yeah, please, yeah. Bring it on over. You're making your own ferments that go into this space for the YouTube viewers and for those@growcast.com He's, uh, flipping around his camera and showing the space that he's in, which is like, kind of looks like it's sealed all around, almost. It's
my garage. It's, uh, 500 square feet. So this is the thick this is the fig,
some fig ferment, like a golden, oh, man. That looks like honey. That looks delicious. First of all, does that smell good? It does smell it looks like honey. Is what it looks like, raw honey that's kind of crystallized. That's beautiful. Wow. Very, very cool, man. You've really taken this to to the nth degree, as they say.
And then this next to it, Jerusalem, artichoke tip, the flower tips,
trying to get it off. Wow, interesting.
So the flower tips, just the flowers of the art. Yeah, just a flower. Yeah. So you can see it's
now, don't go making any jokes in the comments.
And it smells, smells like artichoke. It's got a I love artichokes. It's not a pungent smell at all. And then we got em one activated. Em one just as just three days old. And then I've got my lactic acid bacteria. It's only about three days old. She's built on it.
You've got these in, like vintage lemonade dispensers. They're
laying beautiful glass,
and they hold it. It's ridiculous. Your garden is ridiculous. This
is, uh, we I mean that in the best possible way, per minute plant juice. This is a weed, Fermented Plant Juice. I just stuck my damn banana that I ate in there earlier. But if you open this stinks, this, this smells like, Sure, so this, so it's very used very sparingly. Yeah, that stink. But if you don't take the top off, and if you just squirt it out the edge here, just just hit it with that, this a little bit in there, and pour it in a bucket of water, squirt it in it. I mean, it makes the whole place smell like for, you know, about two or three hours, but then it gets good. So
where are we at now you're showing the garden, and obviously these plants are coming to an end. Some of them are harvested. Some of them are huge and bending over with their
whole this is, let me get up. This is, this is that land race I was talking about. We've been slowly chopping this down. You can see how it's just because it's only like, well, it was only like, four inches from the light, maybe three inches from the light, and I just burn it to crisp. It's kind of why I didn't. I'm not messing with this big one, I'm just chopping and dropping. So what I'm doing here, you can see is that I'm taking this and I'm just chopping and dropping it, letting it decompose. Yep, all all matter goes right back into my soil beds. So what we got going on here is that is the pond runs from over there, and it runs up the hill, back down, comes back around, comes back around, down, through here, and then back into the pond.
So it's a circulating pond system. Circulates
circulating. Basically it's a creek system that circulates from the pond up a mountain and then spits out up here at the top and then travels down in the creek system, is the filtration system. So we replaced this filtration box that you normally would have in a pond, outdoor pond, with the creek system. You add roots, growing living roots to the water, and eventually you get clean water. This is the new structure that we're building for the turtles. And we just created this cave. Like,
that's their turtle doorway. They're showing a turtle
doorway. Yeah, they're going to be to come in underneath here, like a cave. This is terrestrial. This is the dry side, so to speak. This is the wet side. So this is all the wet where all the plants go. We want to separate the turtles from from the from where our plants are going to be, because they do the
so going back to that, let's talk about those turtles. What did they do? Did they start, they start nibbling on your buds, or what?
No, they won't start nibbling on you. But they will take small plants, though, you know what I mean. They will take small plants, and they will, you know, they do eat that diaconja, that diaconja grass that cascades over into the pond. Yeah, and they nibble on it. They love that stuff. God,
such a beautiful garden. Yeah. So this circulating creek that you have waters all of those plants that you grew just through the wicking process of sand silt, and you didn't have to do any additional irrigation or, I mean, I guess they are planted rather close. When you look at it, there's a lot of soil space. But again, for the audio listeners, it's planted pretty close to that quote, unquote Creek, that indoor Creek, and it's just beautiful, man, it looks like they're not they're definitely not wanting for water. They're praying. And all the videos that you're posting that's amazing, that the system just wicks like that.
That's what we were talking about earlier, about my first problems. All right, so it was wicking way too much. Here's the trick to this. There's a trick to all of this. And trick is, is that? How do I get this water, let's say wick and penetrate the soil pockets the way we need to the way it needs to be without overdoing it, to where we flood the system, and then we have a mess on our hand, and that's where the horizonal soil system came in, okay? And that's where we started building layers. And that that kind of solved that problem. But then I was like, Well, how am I going to get the soil to wick, you know, the water that I need. So that's where big worms, organic mix came in, because it has that lava has crushed lava rock in it. Picture, this picture my so this soil right here, sandwiched in between a layer of sand, silted clay and sand, silt and clay. Okay, so there's a layer at the bottom, and then there's a small, thin layer at the top, and that layer is connected to the creek. So that layer is con is once it starts wicking. Now it wicks, and this wicks right on up into the top, and it'll wick it all the way to the rock wall,
the plants acting as an exit, obviously, pulling that water out and putting it into the air. That's that's really cool. Man, it's a delicate balance here. Obviously you now you have turtles and and mud flies and everything going everywhere. Where do you go from here? You just took down a run. Are you gonna plant more of volume, or new or what.
Now we've got a whole new line coming in. That's what I've been that's the whole idea behind this. Is to is to showcase and inspire people to do more than just a pot. You know what? I mean? There's more to this. And if you want to take if you have a hobby, if you want a hobby, you know what I mean, like myself, like I wanted a hobby.
You got one? Josh
in organic gardening. You know, outdoors is a great hobby, but in the wintertime, I don't have anything, like my pond. My fish pond shuts down outside. You know, I don't do anything. I don't feed it. I don't have to clean it. I don't do anything. I basically they just go into hibernation. And that's it. Well, I was like, well, and I'm missing out on four or five months of growing, you know, you get a whole run in if I just bring it indoors.
I can see, I can see what you're saying. As far as, like, you know, you can take it a step further if you want to go down that path and become a bit of a plant wizard like yourself. And you know, it was more than just bringing it inside. Josh, I liked what you said about how you're missing out on those winter months. And I can only imagine you waking up on a cold winter morning and coming out here with a cup of coffee and a joint. All
this came about from just starting something. You know, I just, I just started. And that's the biggest advice I can give anybody, is just, if you got an idea, just start, and then all those little ideas will just compound on you, and it'll just grow out of control. And next thing you know, you're, you're sitting here with a damn ecosystem in your basement, growing plants that you never knew you would even grow in conditions like this.
That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to Josh from yellow skunk farms, of course, growcast.com for all of the archives, all of the episodes on video there, plus membership seeds events come and check out the growcast event schedule. We've got the natural farming, immersive coming up October 11 and 12th. Don't miss that class. DM me. If you're traveling from out of state, have a little discount for you, and this is one you're going to want to travel for everybody will change your life, so go and check that out. Quick shout out to rooted leaf nutrients. If you're not totally satisfied with your nutrients, rootedleaf.com use code growcast. Grab their silica skin and start using that as your silica supplement, or grab their solar rain. If you don't have a good foliar, it's going to absolutely make your plants explode with growth. Rootedleaf.com. Code grow. Cast 20% off. Thank you everybody. I appreciate you. Be safe out there. We'll see you next time bye,
bye. We want to separate. We. The turtles from, from the from where our plants are going to be, because they do fuck it up.
