Woman's Incredible Backyard Homestead Produces TONS of Food for Her Family – URBAN GARDEN TOUR

foreign [Music] Urban Homestead I'm an Urban Gardener growing in a small space in my backyard I am Urban homesteading I am growing our own food I am a mother of two one adult Son and one teenager I'm growing food for us to eat fresh food food that I know hasn't been sprayed food that I know you know how it was grown I do have a small Orchard area where I am growing apples and peaches and I'm also growing meat I'm growing eggs um so I have seven chickens and I have five Quail but um the biggest thing that I'm doing in my backyard is growing food it is something that I started doing in 2020 and it's a lot of things to me it is food it is peace it's a hobby it's a thing that I do that makes me feel good like that one little C can produce so much food and it's just amazing to me it's a lot of work but it's a lot of food and you wouldn't think you could grow that much food in your backyard but I do do kind of intense planting out here so I feel on the bed as much as I can just kind of the thing that you do in an urban setting when you don't have a lot of space then I will tell you during the summer I don't buy vegetables I have no reason to even in the winter because I do preserve my food I freeze some I'm learning to can a little bit better I dehydrate I dry things like just air dry them so I also don't know the last time I purchased herbs because you know herbs grow huge and and they produce a lot in one season and some things that just grow because I like to grow it I have a lot of medicinal herbs and I'm trying to learn those as well so three years I've been doing this and it's a lot to learn it's a lot to do and I can't see myself not doing gardening and I say to myself like why didn't you start earlier why are you just now starting but I don't think you would know how much you would enjoy it until until you start my backyard before was it was actually pretty scary I didn't come back here that much before I did this and now I found myself here all the time I never thought that this would be what my backyard looked like honestly I watched so many YouTube videos and I did a lot of reading on the internet and so as the time has passed you know we went from one garden bed to three garden beds and then it just kind of exploded into what it is right now so 365 days a year this Urban Garden grows oh and do a lot of growing in bags it helps me to have more space to grow where you know I couldn't make the bed big enough to grow the same plants in it I use bags and that has very much extended my growing space there's probably about 60 of them out here if not more that's where I was at last count missed these that got huge cucumbers probably make pickles out of them I'm I'm very new to canning I did a little bit of Canon last year but I'm not exactly sure I did it right but I am gonna try again you can get a lot of food from a small space Garden so like I said I grow in bags but I also grow uh kind of in raised beds so the cinder block babes are the raised beds and then you see the bags are here I also have no dig babes and so basically I just took compost well I put cardboard down put compost on top of it and then just started growing so it doesn't have to be super expensive to start a garden actually the bricks that I have most of them they were free someone on Facebook Marketplace said you know if you want them you can have them it's a I do containers raised beds no dig also my Orchard area and my herbs they're all in ground so I'm growing in what four different ways I grow up to this saves me space so where you know I would be growing let's say these cantaloupe on the ground and they would just be kind of scrolling everywhere I grow them up and it gives me space to grow more you know down on the ground and in the beds but it's a mix and I kind of like that I like that everything does not look the same I like that you know there's some contrast ass in the garden these are my blueberry bushes those are low Bush and I cut them to keep them the size that I want them to be blueberry bushes can get huge and so can still you know grow in my backyard I've got Tomatoes back here which is the normal you know gardening thing there's Tomatoes back here there's squash there's zucchini I'm even growing asparagus which is a perennial that you'll have for the rest of your life once you plant it I'm growing onions and I'm actually growing the onions in a hole of the bricks so not the biggest ones but they're edible they will work in a meal um what else like I have beans growing up this trellis right here need to go ahead and harvest those my trellises are cattle panel trellises and they can literally stay up all year long and you don't have to keep taking them down and putting them back up they're really good for your Vining things so you can grow things that vine a pet trellis so I love growing up is what they call it I have basil and oregano growing the way I see it if it's in a seed packet and it can be planted in soil I'm gonna try it in my backyard but I mean cucumbers Tomatoes beans squash cantaloupe watermelon I'm not very good at growing watermelon but I tried every year so that's a basil Harvest um once they start to try to flour I always take the tops so that the plant can keep growing and I make tea out of it um I will dehydrate it or let it air dry so that I can use it in the winter but my garden does grow all year long so we're in July next month in August I'll start planting things for fall like your broccolis and your cabbages collards things like that but I grow 365 days a year I don't really keep up with how much food I harvest I harvested I eat it I preserve it I probably should but in general there's a lot of food that comes out of this Garden every year and I'm very happy for it when I started gardening I can't say that I had a profound reason why I was doing it like there was no you know I want to know where my food comes from there was no I don't trust the food system if I'm honest I'm just going to be honest it was just more of needing to find something to do knowing that my daughter would eat it but at this point yeah that's kind of my reasoning for gardening I do want to know where my food comes from I do want to know that it wasn't sprayed those are those are the things that I do now um it is my reason I'm out here with the girls so I have hello lady I do have seven chickens uh this one is peace I'm gonna feed them they're very much used to me now uh they also will peck me if need be but they're used to us now we recently got four new ones see there she goes she will peck me we recently got four new chickens I wanted uh different color layers the girls that have now they lay like a light brown and a light pink another thing that I do over in the corner of my garden it's like right beside my porch because I do compost um it's just like a two bin system that I have set up over here it's looking a little messy now like I said we're in July but yeah I harvest I keep kitchen scraps and I do try to do hot composting there is a thermometer in here somewhere yeah it's not very hot right now I need to warm it back up I harvest water um in a rain barrel it's a collapsible rain barrel and I need to put a spout here so that it comes down but I do Harvest rain water as well in my backyard [Music] so I figured I'd bring you over into the greenhouse um I'm growing a little bit over here um I have some shelves in here and so these are just some shelves that I got this was an old shelf that was in the house I think I got these shelves from Walmart so this is kind of a multi-purpose use so I dry things in here and I start seeds in here and back here there's a table with all my seeds starting stuff on it and I like to have a spot to sit if I just want to come out here and hang out so I find that these greenhouses kind of get a bad name um because you know they're not as sturdy as a greenhouse that you would build out of wood but you can reinforce it well enough where that doesn't end up being a problem when I originally got it it definitely flew all over my backyard um and then I reinforced it with some Stakes I reinforced it with some cinder blocks some some rocks and it's been a really good greenhouse for me it didn't take a lot to set it up it's a nice spot and if and if I actually maximize this space you know I could grow more but I also kind of wanted it as a space for me to come and relax to get out of the sun to get out of the rain to get out of the cold and I don't heat it or anything but it it works for what I need so one of my biggest struggles you would think would be space but I find that I have sufficient space to grow a lot of the food that I want to grow the tall food the big food the wide food I can grow it I can trellis it up I can let it sprawl in a space where I don't normally walk honestly one of my biggest struggles is the weeds that grow in my backyard so I think it's called buying weed and it's a running weed so once it comes up it just roots and keeps going and so I found that I've been able to suppress it with weed fabric um and that's not a thing that you have to have because for a long time I just used cardboard and I would lay that down in my walkway I do a lot of my weeding mostly in the off season during the season if I see it I'll pull it but I'm much more concerned about harvesting my food I've been lucky enough not to have to fight too much Wildlife like I have squirrels um I had mice last year pretty bad I have had possums in the back but not messing with my food they were messing with my chickens but that worked itself out too um and so when you talk about growing in an urban setting in your backyard there are things that you don't have to deal with that you deal with out in you know in the country or where you have lots of land and I don't honestly aspire to have a lot of land I enjoy this now I do want to live in a place that allows me to have more animals I want goats but in general I'm pretty happy with this space that I have right now and I don't honestly don't aspires to have a lot of land starting the Garden in your backyard can get expensive but you don't have to spend a lot of money to do this and I kind of want people to understand that because I know when I started I was buying everything someone said something about a fertilizer I went and got it someone said something about a way to Trellis I went and got it and I just had to stop and I had to think what is it that I can do that's not very expensive because the point of this is to grow your own food but you don't want to grow your own food at a cost that's more than what you know you'd pay at the store no dig is a wonderful way to do it because the only thing you're really going to pay for is the compost you can find the cardboard for free so I think my space is still very cozy very neat but I did not spend a lot of money for it and I didn't buy everything all at once and I do share this garden with the world I share this garden over on YouTube at yellow door Urban Homestead and I also share my garden over on Instagram look at those tomatoes the cherry tomatoes I do share my garden over on Instagram at Miss Asia spratley um I just enjoy sharing I want people to know that you don't have to have a whole lot of land and you don't have to have a whole lot of space to grow a garden that produces a whole lot of food [Music] this is absolutely absolute thing for me I think I think I'll always want to be in a garden surrounded by my plants I always want to be thinking about what I'm going to grow next I'll always be watching YouTube to see what others are doing and admiring their garden and admiring their tenacity and and their patience and because it takes all of that to grow a garden but what you get back is so worth it it is very rewarding and I absolutely love being a gardener foreign subscribe to explain Alternatives and please share this video if you liked it you can also follow Asia on YouTube and Instagram thanks for watching

Channel: Exploring Alternatives

Views: 1,175,790

Keywords: backyard, garden, homestead, small, space, gardening, urban, city, growing, food, vegetables, container, bag, bed, raised beds, urban homestead, backyard homestead, backyard garden, growing food, in the city, fresh, fruit, orchard, peaches, apples, herbs, cinder, block, trellis, cattle panel, no dig, backyard chickens, hens, laying, eggs, quail, meat, preserve, harvest, freeze, can, dry, compost, rainwater, greenhouse, Asia Spratley, Yellow Door Urban Homestead, Exploring Alternatives, micro, documentary, story, yard, 2023

Id: K48WGZYWsxc

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023