What can you do with a small property?!

so a lot of people ask me I've got very limited space what can I possibly do with my property I want this video to be a highlight of what my wife and I have been doing this is our beginning of our fifties and developing the space together it's about a half acre but when you take away the house and the driveway and the areas that we can't garden it barely point four acres on a North facing slope poorly drained we don't get a tremendous amount of Sun and we're near a very busy loud and smelly Road so what can you do if you have those constraints let's see some of the things you can do a space to operate a small permaculture nursery it actually earns us a pretty significant portion of our income we're kind of sold out for the spring almost permanent raised beds that have season extension built into them with really high value perennial crops in a crop with annual crops actually have a few of these some of them just getting up to speed this spring space for some really exciting crops like these luscious everbearing strawberries and purple asparagus pretty young but still getting up to speed lots and lots of snacks here little nooks and crannies here there to grow out nursery crops and future food forests these little containers have chestnuts in them these containers have baby sea buckthorn so even on a tiny place you can have hundreds if not thousands of trees growing in Mobile containers probably our most significant single garden space is this roughly 0.1 acre backyard garden this produces a huge amount of our food I talk about this in greater detail in another video I'll link to that and we'll do an update video on this this summer but this is a beautiful destination on the southern end of our property lots of perennials and most of our if not nearly all of our annuals groanings here with a lot of season extension possibility as needed and all of this using water we pull up with a solar panel or collect with rain off the roof no wealth room for little cold frames for more season extension it's got some beautiful overwintered lettuce some borage and parsley all from seed thrown in the fall with the lid left on for the winter to enjoy in the spring this gets us going with lots of seeds to seedlings save tons of money and gives us a lot of extension not that complex or expensive to build little micro ponds to give habitat and ecosystem service and also to allow us to grow some aquatic crops nutrient accumulators and waterways and even a little hand Doug well in the middle of the garden the head of solar panel can lift water to fill a system with lots of high value perennial medicinal and edible crops here's a ranch elder I can take cuttings from we can also get flowers and fruit from luscious black currants with asparagus and all sorts of perennial vegetables and medicines growing nearby more elder this one's monstrous that's a trend even room for an apple tree to sneak in there this will be the first year we get to try that and more micro ponds with room for more aquatic vegetables and calla lillies all sorts of fun things as well as propagation space to continue to expand our plantings and generate income for the nursery all right next to a pond very low complexity high resiliency sees an extension in the form of high tunnels we have three of these they cost a dollar a square foot to build using new material and generate a tremendous amount of food and tremendous amount of value in starting seeds and propagating for our use and for others this one's next to our backyard garden this one's in our front yard right next to the road they're really loud wrap your road but hey it's still willing to grow us lots and lots of tomatoes will be doing Basil's and all sorts of fun stuff in here eating tomatoes in November even next to a busy stinky road even a high tunnel in our chicken yard growing peppers and tomatoes basil marjoram and shiso and holding room for the chickens to go in and scratch around while they're at it lots and lots of season extension in a tiny place space for a little outdoor kitchen even with some housing for birds and bees I see a mama Robin feeding her babies right now I don't want to get too close to disturb her but there she is oh I disturbed if she'll come back speaking of birds we also have room for an entire really intense production chicken and composting operation this was a mowed front lawn three years ago it is not that now even with a nice big roomy coop we could expand our chickens if we wanted but right now we're just adding in lots and lots of delicious perennial trees and shrubs and co designing chicken operation that generates wheelbarrow loads of compost per week and at least a dozen eggs is a all from what was the front yards we have a tiny yard in the backyard but with a push mower we can even harvest that and bring it up front and the chickens turn it into compost so our little lawn is part of our food producing system so it's a nice little lawn not huge but we keep it nice and tidy with the push reel mower and collect all that and it goes to the chickens in the front nice to have a space to have a little picnic lay out in the Sun relax so there's even room for a lawn in this kind of space we've made sure to dedicate some space to the wildlife too little unsightly maybe to us but the birds and the rabbits really love this zone five kind of wild corridors we love it - we let hop some squash and things climb over it but their safe spaces for them to rear their young deep inside that pile of debris some room to store lumber for various projects and even on the west end we can push a little bit past the fence right to our property line so this is about twelve feet wide and sixty feet long and it's a place for us to expand and have even more gardens in the future there's even room to grow here certainly not the most beautiful but there's room to store firewood tools resources supplies things to make charcoal with room to make trellises for vining crops places to make our own soil seed starting mixes and potting mixes store garden infrastructure mulch material my property goes right up to the road so why not garden right up to the road too long a list and explained here but you can watch another video where I talk about this area may be over a hundred trees and all sorts of complex things going on between us in the road there's even room there this is one of the sunniest spots on the property so we've got it packed in and on the north side of the house where it's shady and cool a chance to have a beautiful shade loving garden or some giant Pookie symbol berry and all sorts of beautiful perennial plants that my wife puts in all enjoying the shade and shelter of the space on the north so there's a nook and cranny for just about everything here and this isn't really even talking about everything we've got so I certainly could show some more things but this is enough what I want to get across though is with a small amount of property smaller than this larger than this the exact same as this and with all sorts of constraints wherever you live you can grow a whole lot of food and medicine so give it a shot it's really worth doing we love our life trying to do this stuff thanks for watching

Channel: EdibleAcres

Views: 96,402

Rating: 4.9389558 out of 5

Keywords: gardening, permaculture, food not lawns, growing food, growing food in small space

Id: OoZ5jjvW76M

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Cocohomlogy]

Have you logged calories coming out of your yard?

[u/blockstacker]

This is pretty cool. Well done. You seem to have thought of everything. The only thing you are missing is a Tilapia pond!

I did some math. I thought, wow, can everyone in the world do this? The answer is yes, but we would have to re-appropriate every single available acre of arable land on the planet. The bonus? Everyone living now would get about 1 acre.

There are 7.68 Billion acres of arable land on the planet. That would require the re-distribution of every living person, 1 for each acre. This will allow the population to double, and it would have to remain at that amount.

Thanks for the inspiration for some deep thought, and I am glad I just found this SUB!

[u/DoobieMcJoints]

That was wonderful!

[u/permcaulturelover69]

So awesome

[u/exhaledajazzcabage]

You sound like someone from portlandia

[u/LBKosmo]

Really enjoy your channel. Keep up the good work.

[u/matthewbuza_com]

What is your typical time input on average to maintain the site? Thanks!

[u/EternalVigils]

Dude sounds soothing like Bob Ross. He's chill AF.

[u/[deleted]]

What's the name of the channel so I can watch more?