Tyler Ford:

Hi, this is Tyler and with Michael with Thriving and Grow Gardens and apologize for the dogs. But anyway, we had this garden installed. We had one prior to this that just wasn’t all that great. And I found Michael online. It’s thriveandgrowgardens.com.

Michael Ismail:

Yeah, thriveandgrowgardens.com.

Tyler Ford:

And they installed this. It’s awesome. And I’m going to let Michael explain. But the irrigation system and just the construction of it, the sun shade, which you can’t see, the whole… We just had the winterized cover put on.

Michael Ismail:

Yeah, the frost cloth cover.

Tyler Ford:

Yes, so take it away.

Michael Ismail:

Thanks, Tyler. Yeah, this has been a pleasure working with you on this project. I just really love designing things like this for the landscape. And really, with a focus on edible gardening. And so, we built this raised garden bed with our frame system and these nice powder-coated steel corners, which gives it a really nice look and some great longevity. And the frame system gives us the ability to do things like this. The custom frost cloth covers for plant protection in the winter. Shade cloth that attaches with magnets, things like that. Just really wanted to make something pretty, that can function really easily.

Tyler Ford:

Well, what’s really good, whenever you have company over, the first thing they do is like, “That’s cool,” compared to what we had. It really makes the backyard pop.

Michael Ismail:

Oh, that’s so nice to hear. I love it.

Michael Ismail:

You were mentioning the irrigation system, and that’s where we’ve also been sort of innovative. We have here a combination of drip irrigation, and then, also utilizing this ancient watering technique called an irrigation olla. You can see the lid of it here. And basically, this is a clay pot, a clay vessel about this big, that’s down in the soil. And it’s a real porous place. So when you fill with water, it’s slowly seeps that water out into the soil. And this is our patent pending auto-fill design. So whenever the irrigation system kicks on, there’s a float valve here. And it just fills up that vessel. And it just slowly seeps the water out into the soil. It’s really efficient, uses a lot less water, which, of course, really important here. 

Tyler Ford:

I’m looking forward to it, especially in the summertime because we travel a lot. And anytime we’ve had a garden, we come home, and it’s just kind of mess, just because of the water. But with what we’ve done here, I’m not thinking, I’m knowing that we’re going to have a much better garden come summertime.

Michael Ismail:

Yeah. It’s one you can really rely upon. And two, with the combination of the drip irrigation and along with these irrigation ollas, it’ll be real nice uniform moisture, even when it’s really hot. And so, when you come home, you’ll still have a real beautiful, bountiful garden instead of having to restart every time you go out of town.

Tyler Ford:

Nice.

Michael Ismail:

Yeah.

Tyler Ford:

We tell people, so if they’re interested in getting something like this, where can they go to find you?

Michael Ismail:

Thriveandgrowgardens.com is the best place to find us. We have contact forms there on the website. And you can see a lot of the projects that we’ve done. We have raised garden beds on there, some different varieties. And also, a lot of education. It’s a big part of what we’re doing, is just really wanting to help people to be successful in their gardens. So we’re teaching live classes three times a month. We have a class library of past classes, free resources that we’ve created. We have quite a lot on there to help people out.

Tyler Ford:

That’s what we want to learn. In the winter, we started a little bit late. So in hindsight, I would have done it a little bit different. But for the summer, I’m really going to plan it out.

Michael Ismail:

Yeah. Speaking of which our planting calendar on there for Tucson, is a really great way to see how to best time some of those crops.

Tyler Ford:

Well, cool. I appreciate it. They did a great job. The installation was awesome, and we’re happy with it. So thank you.

Michael Ismail:

Thanks Tyler. Sure appreciate it.

Tyler Ford:

Thanks.