This Gardening Method Changed My Life

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel i am so excited for today's episode because we're gonna be talking all about high intensity spacing now a lot of you have asked about high-intensity spacing because you're new to this channel a lot of you have also asked about high intensity spacing because you've had some questions about it and you might have heard about it from some of our older videos which i thank you by the way if you are new to this channel and have been binge watching our older videos or if you've been watching this channel for any length of time and have heard this concept be talked about from time to time and and you actually have the courage to ask these questions because first of all there's no such thing as a dumb question but the second thing is that oftentimes when one person asks the question there's ten other people that are too afraid to look dumb but don't ask the question and so in today's episode we'll be talking all about high intensity spacing why i love it so much and why it has been probably one of the most life-changing things that i have ever kind of come across and discovered in our garden and uh and i i don't generally use that too often you know when i say something is life changing i a lot i know a lot of people tend to look at that as kind of hyperbole a lot of people look at that as kind of cliche but this is something that really is life-changing for me you know when i look at our garden i look at it not just as a hobby yes it is a hobby yes it is kind of therapy for me to get out get my hands in the dirt and de-stress a little bit after a long day or you know just a terrible news cycle anything like that i just look at this as kind of my this is my oasis of happiness but i also look at this as a way for me to put food on my family's table with food shortages and rising food costs and questionable food quality my garden is something that grows food for me it feeds my family feeds my wife it feeds my daughter it feeds my mom and my dad and my cousins even my neighbors and so when i look at my garden i really truly say that high-intensity spacing has been life-changing for me so the idea behind high-intensity spacing is taking the status quo of plant spacing should be this for this plant and this you know x for this plant and why for this plant the plant spacing is the plant spacing because the plant spacing is the plant spacing that's the general premise you know you just don't question it you do not question plant spacing and i really ans i really asked the question of why don't you question plant spacing and where did plant spacing even come about and who says what the correct spacing is for plants and when i really asked that i discovered that number one plant spacing comes from a very inefficient model you see hundreds of years ago when uh farming was very centralized uh during the the um the kind of the mechanization of everything the industrial revolution farming became very centralized and it was done on large swaths of land where one person would grow you know a thousand people's food but when world war uh world war one and world war ii came around rationing became a thing and the issue was is that there was labor shortages as well as food shortages and so people said hang on a second this centralized form of food is very inefficient it's also very unsustainable and what i want to do is i want to decentralize that and bring it back home and so a lot of people your grandparents i know my grandparents did this they grew a garden they grew a garden to grow food for themselves because if food was being rationed this was a way of putting more food on their plate and saving money in the long run great depression you know everything was about frugality and when they decentralized the farm and brought it back to the home the one thing they did not do is they did not take away any of those inefficiencies you know things like plant spacing things like you know kind of inefficient models such as rototilling irrigation fertilizing pesticides all those things that are done on large swaths of land none of them were ever changed they were just brought back home to decentralize the farm but they were never they were never made efficient they were never adapted to the home scale they were just replicated on a smaller scale and that's really where i found the biggest issue with high intensity spacing and traditional spacing why why did these two clash so much and it's because we don't we don't challenge the status quo still to this very day if you look on the back of a seed packet you look on the back of a a little seed label a little plant label you ask your grandparents that might have been around back in the day back in the great depression or a little bit after that 40s and 50s or so and or you have maybe even asked your parents that have learned from their grandparents about plant spacing you're going to hear this very similar concept of spacing is spacing and you don't challenge spacing and i just really don't understand that i don't understand why we don't challenge spacing and that's why i decided to challenge spacing so the spacing was done because of large farming implements you had big tires you had rototillers you had these big tractors you had you know horse-drawn rototillers and you had all this big equipment to manage large swaths of land well do you have large swaths of land in a home scale do you have rototillers you might have a small rototiller but do you have you know a big a big rototiller do you have horse-drawn rototillers or a tractor no we have smaller raised beds the soil in those raised beds is it hard compacted clay do you have to rototill every single year does it create a dust bowl and blow around and you know displace thousands of people does it uh require very synthetic fertilizers because the soil is spread out so far and you have to manage so much land in as cheap and as cheaply of a way as possible no the soil quality is incredible the soil quality is pure compost because it's not that hard to manage we're growing in raised beds so we don't have to sacrifice soil quality but we also can retain the soil quality because we don't have to walk in our raised beds we can manage them from the outside working inside our raised beds with just our hands we can manage our garden with shovels and rakes and we don't have to use these big farming implements and so the spacing was done because of these big farming implements to manage the land and to manage the plants and to manage the weeds that you had to have all those things for thousands of acres you know hundreds of acres if not thousands of acres you had to have those big farming implements to make it efficient and even possible so when you brought it back home why didn't any of those things change it's not like you couldn't see that you could manage this with your hands people were working their gardens my grandpa was working a garden with a rake and a shovel and a hoe so why did he never question the spacing the spacing was the spacing and you didn't question the spacing and so about three or four years ago i discovered the life-changing concept of high-intensity spacing and that was basically taking spacing and starting with half halfing the spacing just starting off by halfing it i said well halfing is a good place to start some plants you can grow them half as close as as what's recommended and some plants even closer as we'll get into and what i discovered was something absolutely incredible what you found is that not only was i able to grow twice as much food in half the space but my garden was actually healthier in the long run i was able to grow say in a bit of this size the spacing for zucchinis would be four plants in a 36 square feet area four plants no way i said no way i started with eight plants in a raised bed of this size and what i found is okay there's no competition there was no increase in increase in disease there was no increase in pest pressure there was no ill effects whatsoever with eight plants and that's doubling the amount of plants how much further can we go so i went to 12 plants i went to 12 plants in a small 36 square square feet or square foot raised bed that is one plant every three square feet one zucchini plant one giant zucchini plant every three square feet guess what no ill effects no ill effects whatsoever so i went from a recommended you know it's crazy and absolutely ludicrous to ever consider planting more than four plants you're overcrowding your beds you're going to risk killing your garden you're going to risk failing the entire growing season by planting any more than four or four zucchini plants in a raised bed of this size why would you ever do it i went from that to 12 plants three times the amount of plants in the same amount of space and no ill effects i had increased yields i had more food for my family and i had if i wanted to i had more space to grow more crops like let's say i didn't need 12 zucchini plants because who needs 12 zucchini plants i could just grow six in half a raised bed and use the other half of my raised bed for growing something else entirely it just opened up so many possibilities that i was able to grow so much more food in such a small amount of space but when it came to things like watering we found that we had to water much less why because the plants when they grew up they shaded the soil when they shade the soil they protect the soil from evaporation when the sun beats down on soil it actually solarizes and kills the soil that causes your your the water in your soil to leave it causes you to have to water more frequently it stresses out the plants and it kills bacteria it actually kills the living breathing soil that you're trying to build in an organic garden so when the plants grew up and shaded the soil the soil quality was actually retained the water was actually retained so i had to water a lot less also conversely is i did not have to weed as much because when i when i shade the soil the weed seeds that are growing or would grow are shaded out and can't access sunlight so they're smothered and that leads to less weeding so here is our leafy green bed and one thing you'll notice with our leafy green bed is we have radishes spinach lettuce this is all lettuce here and what you'll notice is that they are very close together the secret behind planting things so close together is that they support themselves they shade the soil and they crowd the soil in a good way crowding is not always a bad thing you can crowd and have them have them compete but if you plant just close enough what you'll notice is that the crowding actually leads to shading it shades the soil see the soil look at this very little sun exposure as these plants grow up they're pretty young right now but as they grow up the leaves are going to grow up and the leaves from this side are going to grow up and they're actually going to support and it's going to block all this out this is going to be just a sea of lettuce by the time this is all done and so it's going to protect the soil it's going to shade the soil it's going to mulch the soil from weeds and it's going to be just so amazing but also you'll notice i'm getting so much more food because i'm not harvesting our lettuce for a head i'm actually harvesting for leaves i'm able to grow hundreds of plants in the same space i might be able to grow 10 or 12. look at how healthy the spinach is now the recommended spacing for spinach is four inches look how close the spinach is it's about an inch inch per plant but you'll notice that i have spacing in between to allow for that air flow which is important you know it's not they're not going to be over competing they're not going to be too crowded but they're crowded just enough to where they're growing and they're getting all the benefits of being close together look at these radishes look at this look at this beautiful radish check this out look at this look at that absolutely amazing no oil effects it's just a sea of radishes super dense but that's because they're growing up they're actually doing what they're supposed to do and they're doing what plants do best and they're covering the soil that's what plants do best that's why a forest shades the soil they love to be close together plants love to be as close as possible but you'll notice look at this just look look at these beautiful radishes amazing just amazing see no lfx none whatsoever now here's our tomatoes the common spacing for tomatoes is three feet apart three feet these are three foot wide beds could you imagine planting just one row of tomatoes through this whole bed that's what common spacing would have but also could you imagine spacing see these are i have six plants in this raised bed right here could you imagine only putting four so not only are you not getting 12 plants you're only getting four plants we're getting three times the tomatoes because we're only spacing them out a foot and a half apart they're getting one foot about about a foot or so from the edge of the raised bed to the plant and they're getting about a foot or so to the middle of the raised bed so that way when the foliage grows up it's shading the soil same exact concept of the lettuce just a different crop and here's our beans you'll notice with beans they're planted out about every four inches apart you're getting about four inches on either side giving a total plant spacing about eight inches roughly but these are bush beans if you're growing pole beans you can space them much closer together and grow them vertically but when these plants are growing they're going to be completely shaded all the all the soil is going to be shaded and it's a lot better than 11 inch spacing between each plant here's our peppers traditional spacing for peppers is a foot and a half well why plant them a foot and a half apart in a foot and a half you could only get two pepper plants but now we're getting three per row also because you're doing a foot and a half you'd only be able to get about about five plants in a bed of this size but we're actually getting eight plants so we're growing 24 plants versus only about 16. and finally here is zucchini now they're small right now zucchini plants start out small so not the best example you know come back in about two or three months when these things are giant but you'll notice that we have a plant here we have a plant about a foot and a half away we have another plant about another foot and a half away another plant a foot and a half away from that one another one right there another one right there and another one right there there's space about a foot and a half apart they're getting about three feet total spacing but they're about a foot and a half apart from each other and that allows us to grow three to four times as many zucchini in the same amount of space so as you can see we use this method with absolutely everything in our garden everything uses high intensity spacing we start by having the spacing and if there's no lfx we see if we can go a little closer and then we go a little closer yet and this takes years to hone this takes years to see just how close is is close enough and we don't want to go too close and so we as we get closer we we lessen the spacing a little bit we lessen the spacing a little bit until we get to a sweet spot where we're growing so much more food in such a small amount of space that we can grow in this garden this 2000 square foot garden we can grow you know in a given in a given year we'll grow 200 pounds of tomatoes we'll grow about 30 to 40 pounds of strawberries we'll grow about 60 pounds of lettuce we'll grow roughly about 80 pounds of beans we'll grow anywhere between 40 to 60 pounds of peppers cucumbers we grow vertically up our cattle panel trellises right there we'll get roughly about anywhere between 15 to 20 pounds of cucumbers from a single trellis it's just incredible i go on and on beets carrots cabbage broccoli cauliflower brussels sprouts you name it we high-intensity space it and it's game-changing it's life-changing for us because we are able to grow thousands of dollars of produce in our garden and we're only growing in 2000 square feet so in closing i know that when people use the term game changing or life changing they're usually trying to sell you on something that's too good to be true it's usually some course or you know some type of gimmicky new business model but with me what do i have to sell you besides just a better growing garden that grows more food for you this is a lifestyle that i've been applying to our garden and it's something that i've been doing for now going on five years and i just want you to experience that same bliss and happiness that i have in my garden because i can't tell you how many people even maybe you have written to us saying that you're frustrated that you can't grow as much food as we do you might be discouraged that your garden doesn't look as good or as full or you know it might be more expensive than you want it to be and just it's let down after let down after discouragement and you just feel like there's a secret like that there's something that's just not being told to you that the world is keeping from you and at the end of the day nobody is keeping anything from you it's just that we are keeping our minds so closed to questioning the information to questioning the status quo and sometimes when we do that as gardeners we discover very simple everyday practices that we can implement in our garden that change not only our garden but can change the whole gardening community for the better and that's all that's all this idea is it's not too good to be true because if it was i wouldn't be able to do it and i'm doing it i'm telling you everything that i do our channel outlines everything that we do we are we pride ourselves in being the most transparent you know not hiding behind anything gardening channel no frills we don't this is not a this is not a scripted gimmicky thing this is just me wanting a better garden for you and so if that resonates with you i hope you know i hope it does but make sure you go check out some of our other videos and and really ask questions if you have any in the comments box below i'm going to dedicate probably about an hour's worth of time when this video first uploads to answering questions so if you have any i'll be in the comments section down below answering questions if you have a question be patient it might take me a while to answer them all but i will answer as many as i possibly can in the time that i have because i want you all to know that i love you i appreciate you and this this is for you this is so that you can have a better garden and i you know i benefit from our garden but my platform is meant to benefit you so thank you guys so much for tuning in thank you all for watching and subscribing liking this video and sharing with your friend if you think that they enjoy as always this is luke from the my gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 187,990

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: R-UcdMRkMgg

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021