How I Became Self Sufficient in 3 Years (almost*)

so I started my garden exactly 3 years ago and early on it was terrible I couldn't grow sh things were getting destroyed by bugs eaten by animals or just not really growing well in general but gardening is a journey about exponential growth and exactly 3 years to the day I started I am now harvesting pretty much all of the vegetables that my family eats and some of the fruit and today I'm going to be breaking down exactly how I got there and a really simple to follow 10 step that process where no matter what size Garden you have or what level Gardener you are if you follow along on this process you will optimize your Harvest all right up first is the biggest variable by far which is space you're going to need space to have a garden or grow your own food which is going to vary dramatically depending on your situation now I'm sure a lot of you are living in an urban setting and space is very hard to come by but I will say one thing if you are p passionate enough about growing and you have that itch you will figure out a way to grow food point being I was living in my apartment in Brooklyn 10 years ago the building had a rooftop that was exclusively used for throwing party covered with just beer bottles and trash I invested $1,500 to start a little mini garden up there and transformed what was a pretty shitty roof into an Urban Oasis at least for me it was a little piece of heaven at that time now was it dramatically lowering my grocery bill absolutely not but it got me in the game I started connecting more to what I was eating learning how to grow food for the first time and most importantly it got me dreaming of bigger plans like getting a space like this which is the current Garden I've been building out for the last 3 years a lot of you have followed this journey this is 1 acre in the suburbs of Long Island and I would say about 50% of the property is growable with the sun and I am slowly using every piece of space possible to grow food which I'm sure my neighbors are slightly confused when they walk by but gardening and growing your own food at least in this country will always be counterculture to some degree not many people are doing it especially in a Suburban environment but do not let that stop you growing food is as natural as it gets humans have been doing it forever all right so you have your space where you want to Garden the next logical step is designing that Garden which to me is one of my favorite parts of gardening because you can really let that inner creativity just shine now one thing I've learned is it's important to not be too attached to the existing space whatever was there we're trying to create something special from scratch that's really just like a Showcase of your own personality and it's also important to get at least a decent understanding of the way the sun works in your environment cuz it's going to create little microclimates and the more you understand what's going on the less changes you'll have to make later on in your garden so I was basically starting from scratch in this Garden outside of one existing plot that they were growing in this was the sunniest space on the entire property but it was completely overgrown so I ripped everything out I weeded it I brought in a bunch of compost and some wood chips got some beds in there and started planning right away the next thing I did was put in a deer fence for protection which also created some nice boundaries in the garden and gave me the ability to create a nice entrance and I love Japanese architecture so I went with the sort of Japanese inspired her immediately after that right in the center of my garden I put in a mini little Orchard because I love fruit and it was always a dream to just grow a ton of it and fruit is very expensive so I have all different types of Asian pears apples peaches nectarines and then on the perimeter of the garden I planted some cherry trees and some pons and then Vining fruits all over the fence line and it's vital to get those fruit trees in as soon as possible because they're going to take at least 2 to 4 years to start producing next there was an existing area with a ton of w wild flowers and I wanted to amp this area up a bit so I created a little winding path with the sitting area and brought in a ton more local native wild flowers with the idea that this space would be dedicated to bringing in pollinators to the Garden which is super important next there was a big walnut tree in the garden that had to come down because it was leaning towards the house oh so I ended up slicing that up for lumber which is finally dry after 2 years and my dad has been already making some incredible furniture with it but the Milling process destroyed a big part of the front area of the garden so instead of just growing the grass back that was there I built four raised beds and I brought in wood chips to fill in the entire area and after a year I saw that the grapes on my property were growing very well so I ended up building a very mini little Vineyard planted a bunch of grape Vines which should produce a ton of grapes in the near future so that's been 3 years of progress in the main growing area and I've got a lot more that I'm doing and things that I want to do but before I get into that let's talk about something very important which is your gardening approach or your method or your style which is so massive in the success of your garden now I'm not a gardening expert there are other YouTube channels dedicated to that and what I'm going to do is tell you some of my favorite that were extremely inspirational for me and really getting up and going and developing my own style we've got James perion epic gardening Hugh Richards Charles Downing the millennial Gardener these creators were the biggest inspiration for me and it's just like getting into cooking you find a few creators you like they all have different styles and then you pick the pieces that best suit your needs so the gardening methods that I'm using are kind of a mash of all the things I've learned from them plus books that I've read of course there's thousands of amazing gardening books out there but I would say overall my garden has that James persion Style Food Forest where you've got a ton of fruit trees working in tandem with garden beds producing a lot of vegetables but all of my garden beds heads are a no dig style where I'm not digging up anything I'm not disturbing the soil microbiology I'm just adding compost on every year to feed the soil and when I first started gardening I will say I was extremely frustrated with growing vegetables nothing would grow and what I learned was that my soil just really wasn't alive at that time over time as I added a lot of compost and organic matter the bug started coming the microbiology really started to thrive and that's when things started to grow as well as really just enhancing the diversity of things that I'm growing and this Garden is completely organic I'm following as many permaculture rules as possible trying to mimic a really diverse ecosystem that you would find in nature giving you the most healthy and flavorful vegetables and fruits possible all right so the next thing I want to talk about is your garden security because you are about to plant and all you can eat buffet for every animal and every Critter in your local environment and of course you're going to be sharing food with a lot of them automatically there's no way to keep everything out I mean the deer in my area are out of control and they've only gotten worse since Co so one of my early Investments my biggest investment in the entire Garden is this thing right here this big deer fence this is 8 ft tall high enough that a deer won't jump over because they will pop right over a standard 6ot fence and I looked at cheaper non-permanent Solutions but I ended up just biting the bullet invest in this Fortress and it was one of the best decisions I ever made and I know that because I've opened this fence or left it open a few times a deer has wandered right on in and just decimated my garden in one night that's all it takes now this deer fence was a bit of a double whammy cuz instantly it opened up about double the amount of growing space because as you can see in my garden I use it as a trellising system for so many different plants anything Vining I'm growing on on this fence pretty much every single square inch of growing space is taken up by grapes or berries or tomatoes or melons so obviously your security system doesn't have to be this intense but I will say if you're thinking about a fence try to think about how it can be multi-purpose so you can actually use it as a growing space as well all right let's talk about chickens or animals in general in your garden or your homestead or whatever you're doing so of course you don't need animals you don't need chickens to have a proper working Garden I was lucky enough to inherit this entire chicken coup now in that time I've also raised a bunch of chicks from babies a lot of you followed Along on that Journey so I've got a decent amount of experience over the last few years with chickens and to answer the main question that most people have are chickens financially viable versus just buying eggs in the store and the answer is 100% no they are not it is a much better deal even to buy really high and eggs at say a farmers market for $10 a dozen vers raising your chickens between the cost of upkeep of the coup and feeding the chicken you're never going to win that game with a backyard flock of say five to 10 hands but there's one thing that most people completely Overlook when it comes to having chickens in their Garden which is their natural fertilizer AKA their so I put bedding or just wood shavings in my chicken C the chickens sleep there they poop on it and then every week I clean that out and pop it in a separate compost pin right next to the coup this mix right here you've got the nitrogen in the poop and the carbon in the wood chips is all you need to break down into some incredibly potent compost now if you have a deep bedding system in your Coupe you don't need to do separate compost for this it just breaks down in the coup but I'll just mix this up every few weeks and after a few months I can sprinkle this in my garden and I can say that my vegetables didn't really start growing well until I started adding this nitrogen rich compost to the Garden things just started exploding and it really showed me the importance of animals in your garden ecosystem so yes the Homegrown eggs are incredible they blow away the standard Supermarket eggs that is one Element but the fertilizer is just as important in that cycle of life and overall chickens are really easy to raise the most important thing to know is that every other predator in your area enjoys the taste of chickens just as much as humans so your main job outside of feeding them is keeping them safe so making sure when you do invest in your Coupe it's got to be secure and there's plenty of detailed videos on YouTube on how to do that but take your time and do it right all right so we've made it over to the composting area to talk composting which is essential for every Garden at some level because the thing is composting can be a little bit overwhelming you can take composting to the highest level and have systems that are heated and break down in one month or you can do lazy composting which is what I do I just have a three bin composting system where I throw in any organic matter and vegetative growth for my garden whether it's weeds from the property or dead plants it's all going in the compost system and I do my best to balance the green nitrogen stuff and the brown carbon stuff I do my best I'm not great at it which is why this compost doesn't get hot but if you just throw everything in a bin it will break down over time and turn into what looks like soil that you can throw back on your beds to feed it now over here I have two plastic bins for all my food scraps and the plastic is to ensure that animals don't get in because they will come for those tasty food scraps and I just take bins of my food scraps throw them in the compost and then to balance out all that nitrogen all that fresh stuff I take these wood chips right here Pine shavings and I throw that on and I just sandwich them in between and that breaks down into this over here which is beautiful compost that I can throw on my garden to give it more nutrients and life the beautiful thing about making your own compost is that you're less reliant on bringing in compost from outside so sources which is a big money saver and really closes the loop in your own garden ecosystem so I would say in your garden at the very least just one of these bins just start making compost it's really simple and it will open you up to wasting less so let's talk watering and just like composting a lot of different ways you can go about watering your garden simplest way is just let Mother Nature do its job and when it rains your garden grows but ideally you have some type of automated system system to have more regulation in your garden and also to do less work I have a drip system that's set up to an automatic timer connected to my hose this Waters the entire garden and I love drip style watering because it goes direct to the source you get less evaporation less water was but I will bring in sprinklers from time to time if it's really hot or I need to germinate seeds that I planted and I recently about a year ago got this big jug right here 1,000g rain rain collection which is hooked up to my gutter collects the rain fills this thing up and then ultimately I put this back into the Garden in some form now right now I just have it hooked up to a hose and I just water things that are dry around the garden but I would like to build this system out to the point where I am watering my entire garden with rainwater because rainwater is a much cleaner Source than the municipal hose water cuz it's not treated it's gone through the filtration of the sky which is magical and it's why your garden looks so amazing after it rains so stay tuned and we'll see how I continue to develop my watering system in my garden all right we're in my basement in my seed starting room to talk about something very important which is starting your own seeds probably the easiest way to save a bunch of money right up front because if you go to nurseries you will get crushed by buying little seedlings the cost adds up quick I've been there many times to the point where I'm like I'm done with this I am starting my own seeds so I bought this three tier indoor grow system because seeds do not like temperatures that are really cold or really hot so you need to create an environment that they're going to thrive and in the summer when it's super hot this environment is controlled and where I'm starting seed and also nurseries are generally going to be stocked up on seedlings in the beginning of Spring and that's generally it but if you're serious about growing food you want seedlings in the spring the summer the fall the winter we want little seedlings ready to be planted at all times and the only way to do that is to do it yourself now that setup could be as simple as putting them in a window that gets a bunch of direct sun or you set up a mini little Greenhouse outside whatever it is buy yourself some seeds or save seeds get yourself some trays and start growing your seedlings for massive cost Savings in the garden all right speaking of saving a ton of money let's talk about these juicy harvests so a lot of the stuff I've talked about before is investment in systems to really get your garden operating now let's talk about the payoff and for me in the first year maybe year and a half I probably had a 25% success rate with my greens my soil life just wasn't developed enough I didn't have enough diversity in my garden so things got destroyed by insects and animals and I just didn't know a lot about gardening but as you invest in your systems as you improve as a gardener the Harvest start to come and they start to come big let me tell you it's kind of exponential it's not like a slow increase it's like every year seems like an explosive growth compared to the year before I am officially at the point where I can go into my garden every say 3 days and treat it like my own personal Farmers Market I see what's fresh I pick it and I let the produce decide what I am cooking for that day so in just about 2 and 1/2 years with some early struggles I am eating about 90% of my own vegetables and maybe 10% of my own fruit at this point but I think that number number will dramatically increase every year to the goal of getting 90% of my fruit as well obviously I can't grow bananas yet I do have some ideas in the backyard for that so again it was a bit scary investing in the garden early on cuz it doesn't feel like it's quite giving back to you but once the system's there gardening is almost free if you complete that Loop if you're composting yourself if you're saving seeds growing your own seed Lings all you got to do is put in work at that point and I love the work that's at least in the growing months you might be thinking what do you do in the winter and that brings me into winter gardening we're going to head out to the Garden to talk to Todd who's setting up a system that can help me grow food all winter long yo Todd hey how's it going good How how how are you doing enjoying the the nice weather since yesterday it was rainy so just getting this thing ready for the cover how close are we to the plastic cover uh very close so we're doing some wind supports and some you know some snow supports and then we're ready to close off the end walls and then we cover it with the top a high tunnel uses the Sun as its heat source so as the Sun hits it it gets warmer in the structure and the structure is closed off in a way where you're playing a game you're trying to hold as much heat as you can in the dark parts of the night until you reach morning and Sun can hit it again and that keeps your crops alive through the cold months I can be growing in here all winter long you're not going to grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the winter you're going to grow carrots beets kale various salad greens spinach those are the things that like cold weather so you're going to kind of work with the season there and then what am I growing in the summer in this the main crop grown in high tunnels believe it or not is tomatoes because you can plant the tomatoes so much sooner than you normally would cucumbers as well they like to run up trellises and you can get a lot of cucumbers and yeah that's what you do in the summer why would this be good for a homesteader or just a home Gardener so being able to grow as much of your food as possible having a high tunnel or you know just some form of season extension is absolutely vital because you'll be able to grow all year round and and have some form of fresh crops to supplement storage crops like you know onions garlic and all the the winter squashes our structures are built to last heavy gauge large diameter steel tubing for the main supports you know you got some big big tubes the intricacies of the members we have running the full length for wind that can help support weight for snow high quality end wall material you know it's really really heavy duty so it's built to last we have YouTube videos for almost every single step of the process Todd's also a YouTuber I do my best you know because these are DIY kitted anyone can build them but the videos make it a lot easier the high tunnel you're building is a 14 and2 a wide structure it comes with a few special features that will help you grow all winter two layers of plastic it's going to be inflated as an extra layer of insulation hard plastic on your end walls that's also insulated it's double layer and you'll also have roll up sides so if it gets hot in there because when the Sun hits this it does warm up even in the winter you can easily roll up your sides and without electricity ventilate and let that hot air out so you'll be able to grow all winter you know in the summer and also keep the temperature regulated nice well this is going to be a game Cher on this Homestead operation I'm excited to get this thing up and going can't wait to get this thing covered look what we have here we've got row already in place I've got seedlings from the basement I'm ready for some winter planning this is just super inspiring coming into this warm space feeling like I've got opportunity in the cold months total Game Changer but for me the goal of this video was to spark inspiration at any level of gardening the key is just getting in the game so you can start learning and connecting with what you're eating if you want more Garden videos check this out right here

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 395,935

Keywords: garden, pro home cooks, mike g, mike greenfield, homegrown, self sufficient, harvests, hi tunnel, farming, rainwater, chickens, livestock, vegetables, fruits, herbs, building, deer fence, security, 10 tips, garden guide, how to, tunnel vision hoops

Id: kfG-TYHSq48

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2023