Tour an Inspiring Urban Prepsteader's Garden

a couple of times now i've gotten to come over and visit some of my dear friends joseph and tammy of chasing summer and if you stick around to the end of this video i can't wait for you to hear just a snippet of their music in fact if you click down at the very bottom where you can show more you're going to get to purchase some of their music and they didn't ask me to say that but today we're talking about urban gardening what an incredible topic so many of you have written in about i want to just give you about four different tips that are going to help you get started and help you know that it's doable but i also want you to take just a smidgen of a tour of their garden and what they've got started here so join us for the next few minutes as we just take a little ramble through their garden learn a few of the lessons they've learned and i'll see you around the corner tammy and joseph are some of my most favorite urban prep studders as i call them they're not super urban but they do live in town with just a very what most would call a postage stamp size piece of earth to work with and yet they have maximized every bit of it and i want to encourage you if you find yourself in an urban environment there are a couple of things that you can do that these guys are doing totally right and that is first of all even if you've never grown anything in your life even if you've never planted one seed i want you to consider learning all of the wild things that are growing around you already literally there are trees there are grasses there are baby violets and dandelions that are edible throughout your yard that would feed you in an emergency that's number one would you agree i want you to point out some of the things you found here but then the second thing i want you to do is is plant a seed i mean literally you do not have to know a whole lot to put a few seeds in a pot a planter a window box whatever you've got to work with in a little bit of soil even if you're in an apartment don't let that be an excuse just put seeds in the ground and you're going to be witness to several miracles that you don't deserve that are going to come to life and potentially feed you in an emergency so those are my first two tips for any of you that find yourself in an urban environment and tammy you have done an amazing job of that literally you have planted seeds and they have grown and i know you and your husband have spent a great deal of time trying to nurture them and learn how to do it all learning as we go yes but this is an amazing yard even though you're so close to everybody you have learned about so many different things that you can eat right out here show me just a couple that you learned this year so i have discovered that this uh wild grape the sour grapes here yes we've been using them as dolmas you know just pouring boiling water over them and then just wrapping up rice and meat and everything yes wild grape leaves totally edible yeah and also of course we've been eating um you've got bamboo growing over there which we've made tea out of and we've also used the bamboo you know shoots awesome yeah that's a longer thing all kinds of things tasted really good what else did we use okay there's kudzu over there which i have just learned is edible and i'm going to try that got it growing all over the place and that is entirely edible so and the mimosa tree was actually one of my favorites because i found out in chinese medicine it's called the happiness tree yes it's beautiful too and it smells good well you can cut off the outer bark and make a tea that helps with anxiety and depression which absolutely i've tried that and i've used the blossoms too you can't stay as pretty but you're a little too high in our yard to get to those i need a bigger beautiful yeah and you've got honey locust true i was so excited i have to tell you just this week i read about how you can use honey locust the pods not the seeds but the pods as like a replacement for carob or a chocolate flavor so you can make like little truffles and everything i cannot wait to do that with some honey locust pods well when the pods come you need to come over absolutely i will be here what else well we also i just discovered this past week about hackberry yes i heard that until 60 years ago it was like considered a little called sugarberry like a little treat we have a big hackberry tree over there you know i don't know all of the details except for i do know you can eat the leaves and the little berries i've been eating the birds are always going crazy for them but they're just like little sweet treats like a little crystallized almost like an m m on the outside one of our best crops this year have been the tomatoes no surprises they planted tons of tomato plants and so every day we come out here and just get a whole bowl full of these little tiny yes these are the cherry tomatoes right mm-hmm oh i love it little ones and then we have been growing some tomatillos up here these are yes uh blackberries blackberries they haven't really done that well this year they look beautiful uh the plants the leaves they look great but we haven't had too many berries yet maybe next year maybe next year but these tomatillos oh my word they have taken off all these beautiful little lantern-like tomatillos fantastic yes look at this they've been growing like crazy just and i just like little japanese lanterns now unfortunately we had some of them that keep doing this sort of like turning brown at the bottom so we're trying to figure out maybe if the soil needed something other than yeah it reminds me of the way tomatoes do but i don't know what happened to it figuring it out yeah now what's over here this is rhubarb i love rhubarb strawberry rhubarb jam oh yeah oh yeah this is kind of getting to the end of the season for it in in our garden apparently but i mean i have gotten so much rhubarb and i've even frozen a bunch of fruits great and it freezes great yes absolutely we have amaranth growing wild in our garden you know what we just decided to leave it i love it i am absolutely about strategic leaving of the unexpected like it's food that really wants to survive that we didn't have to go so i see all your beets growing down in there too they're all popping out of the soil so when i planted a lot of lemongrass i just got the stalks from a you know international market stuck them in water for a few days and then actually it was about two weeks a few days two weeks and they rooted and then i have four big plants that's beautiful so i'll kind of use a tea or a thai food and this is one of my favorite um herbs in germany that a lot of our friends have it's called lavage can you leave chocolate pick a little for me i haven't seen that before uh it's kind of like the same taste that's in bullion cubes that really savory look at that how interesting it smells a little bit like celery as well but you find it in bouillon yeah they use it to make bouillon and it has that oh yeah aromatic boiling oh it totally smells smell and flavor i love that great for soups what does that remind me of yes uh joseph cooked lamb the other day i was just gonna say it would taste perfect with lamb so over here we have um the lemon balm that's just taking off yes one of my favorite things to smell and make tea from i mix it with a little bit of peppermint leaves yeah you know evening tea to get get you calmed down i love how you've got so many things just growing randomly together a little bit you probably didn't plant them random but i'm looking this asparagus growing right next to the tomatoes is fantastic yeah i see or no this isn't even asparagus what is this it's an asparagus tree it is it is okay yep and then the strawberries have taken over all through here right and we keep getting more and more asparagus it's been going on for a few months and i thought they had a shorter growing season so we're just thankful that we keep getting more fantastic it's turning into a food forest absolutely so this year we got quite a few squash our most productive plant actually we got four little sprouts from the farmer's market uh-huh and we planted them and when they were starting to grow i got really happy and then they ended up being gourds gourds like decorative gourds you can't even eat nope can't eat them oh no so that's hilarious though yes it was labeled squash so you know they make good gifts and they look pretty in the fall it's true we got some cute little eggplants ready to pick almost here are the most beautiful color we've gotten so many of these so far this year so isn't that striking with the dark purple against these olive colored leaves and the leaves are such a unique shape also it's true just beautiful this year we've had so many tomatoes more and more tomatoes and now we're on like a second round i feel like it's the place we've had like a second life we've only had a few peppers this year though really there are peppers except the serrano peppers you know we've just had a few that's probably you know that is ready to pick that's gorgeous big old bell peppers and you've got the atomic tomatoes those are my favorite they keep coming too i mean these atomic tomatoes actually planted a lot from the same pack yes sometimes they you know are golden and red and they're like little jewels and they've done really well we've had our little serrano peppers they've been just producing like crazy but they're very hot yes these are very hot i am not a hot pepper lover and then what is this one here or one lonely poblano pepper that's the one pepper of the season on the planet itself one little poblano pepper he he's uh he might be lonely but he's healthy he's strong yeah he's holding it at his own tammy here in a minute i want to talk to your husband because i know he's a huge help to you out here in the garden isn't he absolutely yes he has hooked you up with like a water reclamation system which i can't wait to see yeah and i also saw all of the sweet potatoes you've got growing out front we're gonna be eating sweet potatoes for a couple years yes i think you've got at least four years worth out there growing which is wonderful but if there was just one last question i have for you it would be like what have you learned what's one of the biggest lessons you've learned this year being home trying to garden to this scale you know this year and and put this much effort in i think the biggest thing i've learned is you know don't don't get frustrated about things that i plant that aren't doing well when the weeds are taken off because i watched this youtube video by a lady that was hot she had like an empty a raised bed garden yeah and it was overtaken by weeds and she said you know what i used to get angry about this but now i just look at it as free food that's grown itself and you know she she harvested it and i thought you know what i'm just going to let the weeds grow we've had amaranth light yes amaranth growing through your garden just let it grow actually even papaya i tried so many times to plant papaya trees yes and then our compost planted them all through our garden so you know so all the effort to make the papaya grow didn't pay off but then when you throw out the compost with papaya in it yeah those seeds take off yep it's hilarious that's like a cruel joke but wonderful i'm just happy something's growing that i can eat yes yes well let's go talk to your husband thank you so much for giving me the tour my pleasure i love it joseph thank you so much for being with us thanks thanks for having me tammy brags on you all the time about how many hours you spend out here in the garden to make this work for you guys thanks it's fun you know it's work but you have to enjoy it yeah well there are two things that i think are so important whether you're an urban prep setter or out in the country and that is in a garden so rarely do we have an alternative source for water yeah and then the protein question of where are we going to get the most bang for our buck with protein growing in our garden that's just a tough one yeah and you have those two things kind of covered here yeah so can you just give us a glimpse of your what you've got rigged up for your water reclamation sure i mean without going into too much detail this is just a tote you can find them on facebook or craigslist or ebay this is only 100 bucks it's 330 gallons okay and then i just have a flex pipe going from the gutter into the top of that yes and a filter up there so you keep your debris out of the water i see and the the thing that i learned is that if you don't cover this with black plastic to keep the sunlight out full of algae which is why dark green right now and so we've got to figure that out but you know we're learning yes that's awesome for a first year at it though this is your first time doing this right yeah and you've got the spigot right here yeah and i had to buy some adapters you know found some videos that tell me how to do this just about 10 parts from you know home home depot that's pretty ingenious for you to figure that all out yourself thanks yeah i love it and and it's uphill from the garden so yeah it has this natural we made a great point yeah we just luckily we had this raised bed and this is about you know six feet above our garden so we've got enough water pressure perfect i love it okay let's go around to your front because you have done an amazing job of utilizing what most people would say was just a steep little slope out of your front door you have turned it into like the gardens of babylon or something out there with your sweet potatoes and show us all right yeah so you know we had this ugly chain link fence and we decided to cover it by planting kind of just a one long row garden we got this squash that's taking over the beans okra we kind of put a tomato every so often some peppers more peppers yes yeah these these guys you know these and so we have tons of hot peppers so they're growing well and tons of okra you know we're getting some really nice okra and show me this fancy tomato yogurt okay yeah so this is really interesting it's just a little further over it's called a lychee tomato lychee tomato yeah and it's from the amazon and it's covered in thorns so we may have to trim it back so wow it really is these are little red berries and they taste somewhat like a lychee and a tomato why it's called a lychee tomato really do i get to eat one of those you can try one yes is it won't hurt me yeah this is fantastic i love a first time for everything it's wonderful yeah it's not a super strong flavor but we're learning what it needs it smells more like a half raspberry or something half tomato yeah i love it yeah did you see these crazy thorns though my word you would not want to back into this right and look at those beautiful flowers that it puts out joseph as you know sweet potatoes maybe you don't know but sweet potatoes are my absolute favorite i love them too and you have done such an incredible idea that i just want everybody to see tell us about what you've done here yeah well you know we needed a retaining wall here and we looked and planned and so what i ended up doing was i bought this um eastern red cedar rot resistant and built this kind of two-tiered so basically the retaining wall is a raised bed garden but it's very deep to give a lot of room for the sweet potatoes to grow that is fantastic of course the neighbors are joking about how the how the vines are covering over my work but i'm like i don't care i just want the sweet potatoes right yeah so so we've got a lot of sweet potatoes growing here and i'm hoping that we get to eat a lot and actually this is really cool some of them we planted you can see these leaves with the purple tinge um there were purple sweet potatoes from an international market oh so hopefully we'll have some purple sweet potatoes so you've got multiple kinds in here growing together yeah and you know you can eat the leaves so if they get out of hand just yeah that's what we're going to do we're going to trim these back and cook them up as some greens for dinners that's fantastic and it helps with the erosion so your front front door is right up there and instead of having what you did have before with an eroding steep hill now you've turned it into something beautiful something productive and your main source of protein for your garden right absolutely okay this is this is epic you need to learn from these folks because whether they were trying to or not they've done so many things right they've got water reclamation they've got a source of protein they've gone and learned all the native plants that are already growing in their area so they know exactly what they could forage for if they didn't have a garden but then they've just gotten started they didn't have to be experts or know everything about it they just started putting little plants in the in the ground and seeds in the ground and are learning as they go and i just think all of us can learn so much from these awesome people thanks appreciate it if you stick around you'll get to hear them sing here in just a minute wasn't that incredible i just want to personally thank joseph and tammy of chasing summer they didn't plan for any of this nor did they ask me to promote them but i know you're gonna want to order their music once you hear a little snippet of it at the end of this and i don't even know if they really call themselves urban prep setters i just know they're doing so many things right i hope this has given you inspiration that wherever you find yourself you actually feel like you can do it get what you need to start where you are with what you have to work with and just call it good but but do something then take the time to share this episode with somebody that you love who might benefit from it and then you know what i'm going to say next i'm going to encourage you to go out this week find someone who needs to have you be their blessing and bless them intentionally this week thank you for joining us we'll see you next time bye bye [Music] so before you go we want to share something with you to the scripture verse matthew 6 33 seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you [Music] his right chest and all these things shall be [Music] added oh [Music] [Music] to you [Music] you

Channel: PREPSTEADERS

Views: 17,030

Rating: 4.9636965 out of 5

Keywords: Survival, Homesteading, Prepping, Preppers, prepsteaders, wisdom creek, Urban, Urban garden, prepsteading, gardening, organic garden in the city, city garden, urban foraging, Chasing Summer, Food Forest, foraging, Sweet Potatoes, Papaya, Hackberry, Kudzu, Tammy Bamber, Joseph Bamber

Id: Qjkz-JW1R_g

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020