It's AMAZING How SIMPLE This Makes GARDENING

what's going on growers it's James prigioni coming to you live from Jersey I get a lot in the comment section you guys asked me James how many hours do you spin out there working the food for us to maintain that place so that's what I want to do today bring you along on some of the daily investments we do to turn from grass to fruit mass let's go as the years progress and the food forest changes what I come out here and do daily also changes but one thing that has never changed is how I come out here as often as I possibly can every day just to connect to see how everything is doing and to observe observation is one of our best techniques as a gardener as a permaculturist and when we can develop a good eye for plants we can communicate with them and learn what they need or what things they might be lacking just by taking a look but from coming out here now I can see something need to get done is we have an area here with some weeds coming through so I need to pull some of those weeds and get the wood chips down thicker I also have some fruit that's dropping underneath this nectarine tree well actually it's a peach tree was supposed to be a nectarine and that fruits dropping business because the plum curculio they laid some eggs in there now they've fallen to the ground I got to make sure I get rid of that fruit so the next life cycle of that curculio doesn't come through and go attack my trees again so I'm just gonna pick some of these weeds down here they're just annual weeds not perennial and when you have wood chips it makes pulling weeds so easy so much less work that thick wood chip molds that's the secret that's the key to growing big healthy fruit with minimal amount of actual work if I had these wood chips thicker I wouldn't have the weeds but let me just pull these out which is nice and easy just like that then I'll pick up this fruit take it off the property and we'll get some wood chips so I got a lot of this fruit off the ground there's not too many because I've been staying on top of collecting it it's not all the fruit that the curculio went after just some of them right here we've got a pear tree a moon glow and this one does real well the curculio seems to stay away from these I assume because it's a much thicker skin so a pears are one of our reliable ones underneath here we've got a number of strawberries there's zucchini that came up that's going be growing underneath this fruit tree almost as like a living mulch let me grab some of the woodchips though we got a whole nother load so I just got another load of wood chips I think it's about 15 cubic yards I mentioned to you guys that I get that for free they'll deliver it the town locally which is so fortunate for me this is triple crown wood chips which means it's gone through the chipper three times so it's smaller breaks down quicker I love this stuff as you can see behind me wood chips and the layering method the back to eating method this is what it'll get you huge fruit trees loaded with fruit and I've never really been watered this stuff since I planted it it's all about putting the right system in the first time being consistent with it trusting in it and following nature because when it comes down to it the further away you get from nature the more work you can have to do that's just how it goes basically I've talked about it before but even from an energy standpoint thinking about that 40 years of solar energy saved up in a tree that's what we're putting on our ground when we put wood chips down and I call a lot of this work at daily maintenance because everything adds up everything accumulates it's not what we're gonna get done today it's what we're gonna get done in a number of all these days added together job tuck off on the wood chip pile state I let them hang out we'll start filling up I know we talked about it before but the idea of bringing this mulch in we're holding in the moisture that's one thing but we'll mainly bring in the life into the soil that's what's gonna heal your soil that's what's gonna take your food forests or your garden to the next level some of you will probably ask it always is in the comments can use walnuts can you use cedar wood chips well wood chips are best all wood chips will actually work if you can get the needles and the leaves in it that's even better that's what's gonna feed the worms and the microorganisms right away have that breaking down because it's not the wood chips it's not the leaves that are gonna feed your plant it's actually the life of the soil that's gonna convert the organic matter into bioavailable nutrients for your plants I believe success in the garden or Nathan comes from following the fundamentals and the fundamentals in my garden come from nature I'm not saying you have to copy nature exactly but the further you get away from it the more work you will incur you can have put down chemical fertilizer if you want you'll get a great harvest part of the first year probably the second year and the third year but every year you're salting your soil by about the fifth or maybe up to the tenth year your cells gonna be salted depleted and because you've never given anything back as opposed to an organic method like this layering every year our soul is getting better every year in more life every year higher fertility that's how I like it investments in these fundamentals those the ones I think that I'll truly pay dividends let's get these wood chips down I heard someone say it's not about doing extraordinary things that's not what's gonna give you real success it's about doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well so let's do those fundamentals extraordinary and do those as best we can just move these wood chips around this tree here that's looking good there's some more chips I can move over there but now I'm gonna grab the pruners and cut back some of the trees to open up some light to some of the others before I grab the printers though I want to show you this right here I put this strawberry in just this year you can see it's flowering and it would produce fruit we don't want that and it's advised even in the books that you pull off the first set of fruit there the first set of flowers from the strawberries this way they'll focus all their growth on the roots which is important then they'll start sending the runners out the strawberries I put in the new food forest they're already sending out runners soon we're gonna have double triple the amount of strawberries we put in for free let me grab the pruners I have them in my mailbox right here oftentimes someone has in the comments why I have the mailbox in here now you get to see why this is where I store a lot of my tools and stuff keep them dry and if I just misplace them because I usually do easy to store them in here let's grab the pruners and get a little work done if you know me then you know I like to pack stuff in but what that means is it could reduce light to some of my stuff so I come out here regularly and cut one thing back to increase light to the others for instance down here we've got this apple tree from seed it's putting out a lot of these side shoots and they're not really they're not gonna produce any fruit it's just basically growth that I don't need something's gonna cut these back which will give me more light to some of my meet somebody are oh and some of my understory plants pruning is another one of those fundamentals that everyone should know the better at prune you are the more chance you have of getting good fruit another fundamental to learn and to be wise about is pollination you got to have the right pollinators and know which trees need certain kind of pollinators to grow some ourself syrup fertile some are apple trees you need specific apples or specific timing threw the flowers at the same time in order to get good fruit from it so I got all this lower stuff pruned out kind of like a lollipop II you can see it's opened up some light and we've got plenty of life in here you can see right here at daddy longlegs spider spiders are huge helps in the garden and they're insectivores they eat other insects so we like to encourage like I always talk about as much life as possible Chuck loves hanging out here too and enjoying himself you can see he thought he's found something in the yarrow so he went through it and smashed a lot of it down one of the fundamentals of gardening that is often overlooked is joy is to have fun out here and enjoy yourself and make sure that you imprint that that childish excitement into the things you plant let me let's take a break though as we've done a little work already and grab some of the strawberries be able to taste the fruits of our work the fruits of our label labor and there's more strawberries than you can even think about eating I love it in here I wish I could bring you guys over to the food forest and share these strawberries with you as we have fun something I always forgot to do is close the gate you can see back there the chickens have already snuck in from the time we started filming till now they snuck in so I'll take my little buddy over there with me talk will go hurt them for some chickens come on Turkey the thing about this is the chickens know where the food is at they know that there are so many so much life so many worms and so many bugs in here so any chance they get they're coming they know the way out though I've chased them out more times than I can count and I probably showed you some of that over here in this section you can see the mulberries from the tree above us have truly started dropping down things in here are doing pretty well it doesn't get a lot of sunlight and we've had a lot of rain lately so some of the stuff is lacking a little light but we're still getting decent production gotta love the kale the Dino kale my favorite getting good salads tomatoes are getting larger which is good a few seconds here we have some weeds this is the wild violet so I'll make sure I dig those out when I dig these wild violet out it's so important to make sure that you get the base of that this is a perennial this isn't an annual this will come up from the root not from the seed so you want to make sure you're digging out the root you want to know your weeds so most of the annuals are doing well in here but the annuals in the new food force are doing even better I want to show you a few more things in this seven year old fruit forest and try to bring you guys along for that progression you can see more zucchini coming up at the base of the trees we love sticking them in the ground digging a hole digging into the woodchips and planting in the soil we don't plant in woodchips we play it in the soil again that's what nature does we look out at nature and we don't see nature planting in just wood chips or nature planting in just a thing of hay it's always in the soil and most over top one of the reasons I'm not a big proponent of hydroponics either because that's almost opposite from nature I just can't see the roots holding in water you've got to have the soil in my opinion to hold that to hold the roots and to keep it sturdy to keep that plant strong besides a number of other things but that's not what this video is about I wanted to show you just our daily maintenance and some of the other things look at that rhubarb oh my gosh the thing is a beast and the comfrey flowering so this country won't produce seed which is nice if I want to spread this around the other trees I'll just divide it divide the root and spread it like that Chuck's running around he thinks he finds something or he thinks he's a hot on a trail probably a squirrel up defense he makes me smile I think more than anything in the food forest he's got he's got a squirrel along the fence that's one of the dangerous parts out because there's when he runs along and can really rip things up the apples on this tree getting bit by the cuckoo leo but man they had their beautiful looking apples had it not been for that cuckoo Leah we would add epic epic harvest from this one really beautiful and the peach tree above me my favorite doing excellent currents in the back getting ready to set up let me take you into the new food forest though and show you how we transplant into that during this time of year this is one the majority of my transplanting gets done a couple weeks ago and now and whenever I basically have time so in a new food forest my most preferred way to grow is from transplanting this way we can keep the woodchips really thick in a section allow the fertility to build up and overall I just like it best I've got my two buckets here at my tools and some of my things I'm gonna transplant in so I'll bring you along for that it may not look like much but in here is actually loaded with plants annuals perennials all different stuff soon it's gonna be tough to see the ground kind of like the food forest let me show you some of the annuals that we put in earlier that are doing well that are excelling along nicely on my way to these annuals I noticed we've got some more wild violet coming up and some other weeds coming around the base of these strawberries you could see these are the strawberries that are already sending out the runners here's a runner here and this will actually route into the ground will move somewhat chips allow that to ruin to the ground grow another strawberry plant that one's got runners to it's like I said loads with strawberry plants soon the peach tree that we put in the new food for us looking great tomatoes looking great and these are brassicas are really doing well over here getting full sunlight with good soil the right circumstances are going to give you the right results I mean it's obvious but just like a computer whatever you put in you're gonna get out it input and output so yuri put yourself in say it a thousand different ways if you want but to want to grow a good food you got to have good soil you want to build good soil i'm my opinion it's gonna take some time gotta get the wood chips down got to get the mulch down got to bring the life in let them take care of it are you gonna be doing all the work so as you can see this area is loaded with annuals plenty of food we've also got perennials strawberries trees and everything along the fence line we've got plenty of cucumbers making pickles I can't wait let me grab that stuff though and we'll start to actually do the transplanting there's always more space though so I'm sure I could find a space in here that I can stick something show you guys how I do it it looks of it I bet I can stick a tomato or a pepper right here let's get one in well you'll notice here is I'm gonna dig down through the woodchips into the soil again we plant into the soil the woodchips are not a growing medium the what tips are simply a mulch and they've got so many worms and so much life in it you'll see as I start to go through here right when you get to the right moisture level you start to see the life show up the worms and everything else you'll notice I'm digging out a section here where it's a nice big circle so the woodchips don't fall in and crush my plant and we've got some Japanese beetle larvae the chickens love this I'll put this off to the side it's one of their favorites so well here's pretty good because I've had some black leaf mulch down in the past what I like to do is go through dig with this rake to make sure we don't have any weeds or any roots because we're pretty close to an old tree as you can see we've got a root here we'll just tear that out make sure the soil is nice and soft pretty good stuff because we were underneath an old Bradford pear tree so just years and years of all those leaves deciduous leaves falling down and breaking down after a long time so this is a great section let's get some of those peppers in so I'm gonna take out some of this native soil put it off to in the bucket for a minute I've got a paradesi and pepper started this baby from seed on the 16th of April and usually I put some micros down you guys have seen that but I don't have any today so we'll just put this down some of the native soil around it a layer of this black leaf mulch which I've showed you in previous videos we get this locally for free just like the woodchips and then bring some more native soil around it as you can see we loosened up the soil around it we made sure there weren't any weeds or any real competition for it we don't want a lot of competition for a young annual like this a little more black leaf mulch and it's starting to rain here so we'll still actually water it in just a little bit when we would or it in some of the sand will sink and kind of fill in the gaps then we'll put a little more black beach mulch on top so we'll water the dog and then we'll water the plant and like I said this allow all the different size particles of the soil to settle in we don't want any gaps at the base of it roots they need oxygen to breathe but you don't want to have too much of a gap that'll actually kill the plant even the sticks in the garden end up being a fun time we love just hanging out here and enjoying ourselves no matter the weather starting raining a little bit but it's nice and cool a great day to get some work done alright that's all been absorbed basically we'll get one more covering a black leaf mulch spin around the outside this will be like fertilizer almost every time it rains it'll bring that in hand they'll bring the woodchips around the base not too close we don't want it cracking the stem or anything beautiful I'm not just transplanting in here though there are sections where I've direct seeded you can see back here we've got a number of different beans coming up along the back in front of that we've got some squash and we've got zucchini and more beads in the front they're starting a food forest gardening all this stuff it's not actually it's actually pretty simple but it's not easy that's why when you think about it's simple but it's not easy and none of this stuff it's it's not rocket science you can do it but it takes some consistency some persistence and just that continued effort that's today's video growers thanks for watching one thing I want you to know is nothing I'm doing here is special you could do the exact same thing I'm busy I'll work 40 hours a week I've got a full time job when you create a system like this that helps support you and you not a slave to it it's a great enjoyable experience if you enjoy the video hit the like button hit the subscribe button and share with your friends one thing that we asked you if you really want to help support the channel hit that notification bell or even send an alert on your phone to let you know when we're uploading so if you enjoyed it a little bit more coming soon don't forget to check us out and steam it - we love posting on there James prigioni [Music]

Channel: The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni

Views: 468,890

Keywords: gardening, garden, gardens, organic, organic garden, organic gardening, raised bed, raised bed garden, homegrown, natural farming, food forest, forest garden, permaculture, back to eden, back to eden garden, wood chips, wood chips garden, how to garden, how to gardening, diy gardening, garden tips, gardening tips

Id: hjKvFNKgGNM

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 10 2018