10 Years Later, From Normal Backyard To Permaculture Garden (Unseen Footage)

what's going on growers it's james piggioni coming to you live from jersey 10 years ago this backyard was just all grass now it's a food forest a food paradise so today me and tuck want to take you along and show you how things have changed let's go the spot that i'm in right now 10 years ago was the location of mine tuck's first garden the backyard was all grass but there was one circular location right here that was all sand where an above ground pool used to be that's where me and tuck started our first garden and yet it might have been just a couple annuals but the important thing is that it was the start since then mean tuck have not stopped planting things and the backyard went from grass to an actual food paradise we're surrounded by fruits and vegetables this location right here was the entrance to my garden nine years ago a year after me and tuck started we decided to expand our garden so what we did was we laid down a bunch of wood chips in a location and then started planting perennials one of the first perennials that we put into the ground nine years ago was this grapevine right here as you can see the grape has gotten much bigger the trunk and as we look up you'll notice that this grape is producing insane amounts of fruit i mean it's just incredible and unbelievable but that's what happens when you invest things really do pay off after time a few years after we expanded our garden we decided to add the greenhouse this me and tuck built a few years later and it's provided an amazing amount of value in regards to starting our seeds it's become an incredible nursery so a lot of the annuals that we planted to the garden this is where they all start as time has progressed me and tuck have continued to expand the garden and have just added more and more perennials i'm going to give you a clip of the first video that i ever posted showing you the backyard in its raw form you can see it was just essentially all grass the location that i just showed you where there was a scrub pine tree now we have a peach tree in production with fresh organic beautiful peaches on it some of the biggest peaches that i have ever grown let's pick this one off and taste it let's grab this fresh peach this variety right here is the avalon pride which is an awesome variety because not only does it bloom late so it avoids some of those early frosts but it also ripens early look at the size of this thing absolutely massive only about one or two little marks on it right here almost a perfect peach but huge let's actually taste it in see how good it is this thing's gonna be so juicy i know it i can't wait organics so we can just grab it fresh right from the tree nothing like it so much juice so much flavor absolutely incredible food i've got so many more things i need to show you though and let me bring you along because this backyard like i mentioned it was just your standard all grass super regular this right here this stump is an old uh bradford pear tree so this bradford pear tree i had to take out because it was on the south side of the property so it was blocking a lot of the sun coming in when i removed this bradford pear tree i replaced it with a bunch of apple trees so right here are apples that we never would have had had we now remove that tree i've got apples loaded on this tree here a bunch of them looking fantastic come down here more we've got even more apples apples and peaches are my favorite fruit trees so i've got a lot of them then let's move to the right where we have even more apples doing just fantastic look how beautiful they are and i've thinned them out so there's not a whole lot of apples on each tree but we're gonna get delicious apples that ripen and i mean there's nothing like it some more hidden under there and then look down below us underneath the apple trees we're growing even more food eggplants here green beans that are just getting ready to start producing you can see some little beans on the purple ones here in the back we have have our next round of cucumbers and all different kinds of melons and things as we move down this way more this is my earliest ripening apple tree this is the williams pride it's got some nice fruit on it i cannot wait to be eating fresh apples these things will be ready late july or really early august so it's great to have different varieties of fruit trees that ripen at different times so you could really extend the length of your harvest so you can be eating fresh fruit for such a long period of time notice all the flowers we have in here too and i put these raised beds in not long ago or well just beds in general and they have just kicked out incredible amounts of food we've got cabbage here ready to go another cabbage over here ready to go to be harvested look at that so dense incredible food right there i'm even growing some stuff in pots along the fence lines look at the cute cute watermelon back here look at that thing just hanging it's going to be a great harvest there and you know we have so many tomatoes growing because that's just this our style and more stuff in these raised bed grapes along the fence line i'm going to show you some more grapes a little bit later we've got buku grapes growing like crazy grapes here we've got a lot of tomatoes growing in this uh section all different varieties here's some of the super sweet 100s these ones taste so incredibly good i'm gonna have to try one right now let's see how they actually taste nice sweetness little bit of acidity so many more things to show though let's keep moving over here this is the first time i'm growing this variety of tomato these are blue tomatoes so these should be a bit unique as they start to ripen i've never grown blue tomatoes but i think it's pretty cool right to the left of that you'll notice we've got some zucchini ready to be harvested so much squash ready at this time of the year and then the boss has got some of his toys hidden back there too this guy's got to have some fun you gotta give him a break now and then then right here we've got more fruit let me lift this up this insect netting we're keeping the birds out look at that look at the blueberries you'll love to see it incredible color on these blueberries then right next to it we have the pink lemonade blueberry look at the sets on these things so nice so we have a two different varieties of blueberries growing right next to each other let me pop some of these in my mouth real quick then we have pears growing here there's not a lot of pears on this tree there still are a few this is the asian pear this will be ready much later in the season and then we have another asian pear over here with some pears on it also again not loaded but we still expect to get some harvest from this one some nice cute little pears in my older food forest i've got the chijuro pears those are loaded we're going to get a lot of fruit off that one look at the tomatoes we have planted in the ground as well these things are going to be big producers for us and we have plenty of zinnias mixed in too and check out uh this keyhole raised bed right here so years ago this section was just uh had an old tree in it and we weren't getting any production out of it it was just a tree that wasn't producing for us so now we've got an insane amount of food coming out of this location i mean everywhere i look there's zucchinis look there's cucumbers all the way over here it looks like it's grown out of the zucchini plant more zucchinis down there we've got massive cabbage ready to harvest in there look at that this thing's ready to go huge cabbage come to the left over here we've got all different kinds of squash look we've got the uh the patty pan squash a white one really cool we've got more patty pan squash in the back but let me show you these grapes along the fence line back here look at the sheer number of grapes this is going to be a bumper crop in regards to grapes this year so this is what we love to see incredible production in a location that used to be have no production so years ago we spent a lot of time and effort just keeping this backyard all mowed and we didn't get anything from it now we spent some time and effort but what we get out of this is incredible amounts of delicious food that you can only get if you grow it yourself before i show you the changes that can be made in a garden with only 10 years first we want to make sure tuck has some fresh water to drink some cold water boy so we're going to fill him up with some water he's such a good guy out here we even got some ice cubes in there for him and i want to mention if you want to grab some merch get it now at jamesprisioni.com we've got water bottles like this to keep you hydrated we've got some shirts like this all different kinds of we've got kids clothes we've got kneelers so there's a bunch of different things check it out at jamesprisgioni.com let's keep moving though because there's so many things to show just peer up a little bit look at this the honey crisp apple absolutely incredible look at those apples down there and up there so beautiful this is a dwarf tree so this is basically as big as it's going to get loaded with apples and this small such an incredible thing peer to right just a little bit even more apples this tree is is doing the best out of any tree in the whole entire property i think when it comes to apples loaded with beautiful apples you'll notice the spray on it we're using a combination at this time of the year of kaolin clay and sulfur to help reduce some of the apple scab let's keep going though there's so many more things to show here we've got some beautiful tomatoes these have a little secret twist to them that i'm not going to tell you now but uh just know that this is these are pretty crazy what i'm doing right here and you'll you guys will find out in a in a couple weeks look back here an insane amount of cucumbers i mean they can't be stopped look down here look oh look how big some of them are we really need to get harvesting there's just so much food maybe we'll get a little one for the for the little boss what do you think boy crack it tell me what you think not bad tuck approved i think so let's let let's let the little boss work on that and let's keep going ourselves okay so come over here some more super sweet 100s this one is planted right into the ground behind it over here the sun gold cherry my all-time favorite flavor tomato so good we'll have to pop one of those in our mouths just to get that flavor because it's so dang good definitely sweeter than the super sweet 100 so incredible you have to try the sun gold cherry if you never have look along this fence line even more cucumbers it's getting really hot though so our plants are starting to wilt a little bit and plus the production of these cucumbers some of the size of them look at this thing i mean we're talking cucumbers for days over here look at this look at all those back there you gotta be kidding me one two three four five six seven eight don't forget these ones back here this is the suyo long look through the fence even more i mean we can spend hours on cucumbers back here this is by far the most cucumbers i have ever grown let's keep moving though we've got so much more food to show look at this mushroom basket tomato here look at those tomatoes down there have you seen anything more beautiful this is the mushroom basket tomato really nice kind of like the costa luto genovese but larger tomatoes and a more disease resistant variety which is convenient check out this palette raised bed now look at the sheer number of tomatoes down here and the absolute beauty they're all starting to ripen as you'll notice that's what we love to see so they're slowly starting to ripen soon we'll have so many tomatoes here and let's take a peek at the cucumber that we're growing up a string in the palette raised bed this is the cucumber that i pruned hanging some beautiful cucumbers from it look at that so nice growing up that one string come back around over here even more tomatoes this is tomato alley i like to call it because we've got this straight row of just tomatoes that you can just come down like from over here this is the start of tomato alley right we come down here we go bam grab some tomatoes some tomatoes over here over here over here as they get bigger we'll be grabbing them like this more here there so so much food here's the costa luto genovese that i was talking about sort of like the mushroom basket this one's got a lot of fruit on it doing really well and you'll notice that there are so many sunflowers growing this year i let a bunch of them come up as volunteers and we've got some really unique ones some cool ones look at the size of this thing so many heads on it too and the one behind it it's like a combination of the red sun and another one it's definitely a hybrid but it's a it's really unique in the way it's growing love the color the bees seem to be having a blast too so like i mentioned earlier this is a food paradise but it's not just a food paradise for people it's a food paradise for all living things check out this sunflower this is the most ridiculous sunflower i have ever grown look how many heads it has on it you almost can't even see green all you see is flowers and all bc is food man the bees must be happy with this one look at that look at the bee right here just actually in a coma thing is so happy just having the time of its life pretty cool let's get over to some stuff we actually did plant though you'll notice this year i've grown a number of things in buckets just to get extra use out of this base so i might be underneath the peach tree that's producing some peaches for us that has been producing for like 10 90 years or so but we've also got tomatoes growing in pots look at that beautiful here's the super sweet 100. move over to my right the sun gold cherry more in pots getting the most out of the space that we do have next let's show some of the blackberries you thought you've seen a lot of fruit on something until you have seen the blackberries it is so much fruit on this thing i'm trying to stay on top of watering it because i know it's going to need a lot of moisture in order to actually finish and produce these berries because there are just so many on them the reason there are so many is because i encourage this plant to grow laterals that's where all the fruit is on not the main stem coming up but the laterals off the side here cucumbers right here we've got more cucumbers growing up a string with some beautiful cucumbers on it this one is the general lee so i really like this variety so again getting the most out of the space that we do have here we have the prisgy-oni apple it's got some apples on it i'm not sure it's going to produce a lot of them because the plum perculia was so bad this year and i didn't spray this one with the kaolin clay but still it's a it's been an incredible producer for us in the past and it's really fun to have a tree that you planted from seed in the garden keep coming though i want you to take a peek at the echinaceas here so something that we've continually done as the years have progressed is we've added a lot of flowers especially our perennial flowers these things go to work for us bringing in the pollinators showing the beauty providing a medicinal and we don't ever have to do anything it just takes care of takes care of itself and next year it comes back even bigger let me keep going here's a cherry tree that has some cherries on it earlier in the year this is the sour cherry though so it's not as delicious as like our rainier cherry is over here we have the uh hazelnut trees these ones have some fruit on them like here some nice looking fruit on the hazelnut trees and some more up there so there's a good amount of nuts on them the only thing is to be honest with you i doubt we're going to get the nuts because the squirrels are like so adamant about eating these nuts when they're small so we still haven't figured a perfect way to keep the squirrels out a lot of people have mentioned to get uh a cat and i'm going to probably do that in the future i just don't want to get a cat just yet with the boss he he doesn't feel like hiring a cat as an employee just yet right here is the jujuro pear this is the asian pear that just kicks out fruit every single year for us non-stop so reliable a great tree and it seems as though the plum curculio which is one of the big issues where i live when it comes to food they don't really mess with the pears as much i guess it's because the skin is harder or something but their first choice are the plums and peaches then they go after some of the other things so fortunately we can get good fruit on this about every year behind us is the persimmon tree look how big this thing has got i mean a couple years ago this thing was like up to my waist now it's just gotten huge and it's loaded with persimmons i love this tree so much because it extends the season of my fruit harvests these persimmons won't be ready until like november till after way after our first frost so that makes it so we can get fruit from early spring like i'm talking late may early june with the strawberries all the way into november with the persimmons so it's an incredible thing to be able to harvest fruit for that amount of time it's a it's a joy that's today's video girls thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it i hope you got something out of it me and tuck love making videos like this so much because we love to show the progression we like showing where we came from because i think that can relate to a lot of you i mean this backyard it may be a little bigger than yours but it's essentially the exact same setup it's just a standard suburban backyard with some grass and to see where it is now if you take a little pan around i think it can be encouraging for some people because they've got that old saying that the first time the best time to plant a fruit tree is seven years ago the second best time is today so i want all of you to start your food forests if you can today take an action order a fruit tree uh put a fruit tree in the ground whatever you can do to get started because it's not about doing a whole lot the first time but it's about continually adding to your garden because there's that old saying that everything accumulates over time we're either going to accumulate the good things or the bad things we can either accumulate more trees adding more perennials leading to more fruit or we won't add anything and if we don't do any work the whole thing will just turn to grass and weeds again so i want everyone to get out there get some stuff planted so you can have a garden like this where it's just a joy to be out here i'm encouraged to you know do any work that needs to be done because i know i'm going to get an incredible payback for it so it feels really good when you actually pay that price and the promise comes true and you get to actually you know taste the fruits of your labor so before i let you go i want to mention to grab some merch down low check out jamespriggioni.com grab some shirts grab some water bottles grab a kneeler we've got kids clothes in there women's clothes and all different kinds of things i also want to thank one of the new channel members tina howard thanks for being a part of team grow thanks for contributing thanks for allowing the dream that mean tuck had from just going from a regular backyard to a food paradise thanks for being one of the people who has you know allowed that to come true we love that you're part of the team and we want all growers to be part of team grow so we can all grow huge amounts of foods together me and tuck will be back at you guys not in a long amount of time i think he's headed inside or he's headed to a different location because i'm telling you it's getting super hot it's a it's a really hot day we're at like peak heat uh this time of the year so james and tuck we back to you again real soon we

Channel: The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni

Views: 168,260

Keywords: garden, gardening, permaculture garden, permaculture, Permaculture gardening, food forest, forest garden, organic gardening, fruits, vegetables, diy, how to, sustainable garden, backyard garden, how to start a garden, how to garden, raised bed, raised bed gardening, James prigioni

Id: cZRrRpp_rQ4

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 16 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/LinFTW]

The one thing he didn't cover at all that I would be much more interested in hearing about is various costs over time. Since he's been living here for 10 years and has all the details since the inception of the garden it would be great if he shared details on the following:

• Water usage over time as the garden has grown, seems like he has to be using a significant amount of water, what do the associated costs look like and how has that changed over time?
• What percentage of his fruit and vegetable consumption does this garden provide?
• Overall cost analysis for each type of fruit/vegetable he has added, financially does it make sense to do this or is it simply for his own pleasure (which is fine)?
• Annual harvest count over the past 10 years on a per fruit/vegetable basis, what does that data look like in terms of RoI and the actual amount of fruit/vegetables he can produce? What are the most cost effective and time effective fruit/vegetables?
• Annual cost in upkeep for fertilizer, wood chips, materials, etc.

These types of tour videos are fun to watch but they don't dive in to the nitty gritty around running this sort of operation. Obviously enjoyment and satisfaction in creating this is a huge benefit, but it's unrealistic for every person to have this sort of garden in their backyard as water becomes more scarce unless this only replaces the water used by the grass which I highly doubt due to how much he's growing.

[u/BreatheRhetoric]

That is amazing to see. I wonder how he prevents rodents?

[u/Montzterrr]

Tuck and I

[u/warrenfgerald]

Its amazing how people watch this and all they can think about are potential problems. The negativity is so depressing. In almost every way, a perrennial food forest like this is better for everyone. Its better for the climate, the neighborhood, the homeowner, animals, insects, air, water, etc...

[u/LennyNero]

Me and Tuck built this garden and all it took was stealing The Declaration of Independence and massive quantities of cocaine!

[u/Bloodari]

One thing I never hear anyone talking about is the fucking bugs/birds/squirrels/animals that eat literally everything that grows. We have fruit trees that the birds come and take bites out of before they are even ripe. The bugs are on literally everything and its a constant battle. This guy just has all his shit out in the open, not netted or protected at all, and is fine?????

[u/IncidentalIncidence]

that's the most excited anyone's ever been to be in new jersey

[u/tecej45530]

that voice is a bit much

[u/CapableDark1478]

"Me and Tuck" - x100 "Tuck and I" - x0