I kill every plant that I touch, other than trees. My mom want even allow me to water her plants. I don't understand it. I can get the smallest, sickest, most injured critter healthy, but can't grow a strawberry? Help me please.
Well I would need to know details, but the easiest answer is that plants evolved inside ecosystems. Then humans come and remove them from these and put them in isolated containers. As soon as we do, we now need to provide the plants the things that the billion moving parts of the ecosystem was providing it. Some people have gotten really talented at it, and know what chemical slurries to give plants, in what doses and what timings in order to do a poor but good enough job of keeping the plant alive. Even a weak plant in a pot will look decent. But a new gardener stands no chance. Even myself, I will struggle to properly tend to the micromanagement required to keep potted plants perfectly happy. But what I DO KNOW is that nature already has this on lockdown. And natural forests do not need a human coming by every day to apply the correct dosage of chemicals to keep the forest alive. So the #1 secret to outdoor gardening is to mimic the forest. Create an ecosystem. Then remove the human and let nature do what nature does. Grow the heck out of stuff. Biggest secrets... Mulch. The forest drops leaves and trees and leaves them there. It doesnt rake them away. This is nutrient cycling, and we need to allow it. So shred leaves and put them down. Get woodchips and put them down. Stop disturbing soil. If we think the above ground ecosystemson the earth are complex and diverse they cant hold a candle to what happens underground. Look at forest soil under a microscope and you will understand what I mean. Forest soil under a microscope looks like pond water. Full of life. So stop disturbing soil and causing soil life apocalypses regularly. Plant stuff, cover the soil, protect the life, then walk away. IPC, integrated pest control. Some pests develop resistance to chemicals. But pests dont develop resistance to getting their heads ripped off by a predator. So if you get aphids, your correct response isnt to remove them. Pest target the weak gazelle, and it's part of the cycle of life. Instead, your reaction should be to leave them there, and plant more diversity to attract their predator. I.e. you dont have an aphid problem, you have a lack of green lacewing problem. I did a video recently exactly on this. Okay, so now you create an ecosystem, you are now in cheat mode, because you will have lush vibrant gardens and will do zero work to maintain it. That is because you have a labour force of a billion workers, all doing your job for you. The secret trick to gardening is to delegate. But plants in pots? I'm not the guy to ask, because my solution to that is to take that plant, stick it in the ground, give it friends, mulch the soil, and let nature take over. Obviously this gets infinitely easier the more established the ecosystem that you plant it inside has become. This is a snowball that builds year after year, in perpetuity.
Its probably your moisturizers or soap, the de-facto governments employ a range of undetectable and detectable tactics to discourage us agrarianly inclined individuals.
@@markj6442 de facto govt. Well I wish I knew the truth. One hand you have right wingers saying climate change is some global conspiracy by the defacto govt and then we say the opposite. Both can't be true can it.
Am 69 and started an urban backyard food forest last year, your video on soil growth flipped my script. Seen tons of videos on above had skipped most every one of yours looking more and more for similar hardiness zone info. All good with that, but u look at big picture key essentials. Deeply appreciative of your straightforward education and giving the "why's" and "mistakes or redirects" . Importance of planting cover crops so no bare soil is a big missing area in most basics others share. Would like to see more on this seemingly unexciting topic. So anxious like many to have more victories. While planting 6 fruit trees and several bushes, and dozens of native pollinators for first time I also redid veg garden to 2 raised bed with square foot garden planning. The beds are big disappointment no growth and squirrels and slugs destroying 90% seedlings. Composting for decades fairly ineffectively, now doing no-dig and sheet mulching which is so much better! A year waiting and got a "Chip drop". The tangible victories are mostly with growing knowledge and more pollinators where all I saw for 15 years were cabbage moths. Currently fairly overwhelmed with planting design elements: maximizing water conservation, best location for trees,, guild options; what can I do in front yard most all shade. These last topics are part of my ask of you in the future. Meanwhile I am watching, rewatching all your videos. Thanks keep up the flow, filling a big need here. Also dialogue in comments section is deep dive hive stuff, never seen anything on YT quite like it, but the topics are also vital to me.
Thank you so much, what a wonderful comment. Indeed there is so much to learn. Just make sure it doesn't paralyze you. Learn enough and then just keep doing, trying, learning learning adapting as you learn more from others and from your land at the same time. Best of luck!
Wonderful video......I’m fifty years a gardener and this year I’m branching out from flowers and roses into a vegetable garden. Less lawn! Yahoo!! I’ve subscribed! Love the video!
Your reference to a victory tree is particularly relevant this year. I started growing and tending food crops in my fifth of an acre back in March when seeds were in short supply and the employees at my local big box store were labeled essential workers. I know that you intended another meaning and I respect the reverence that you have for your food forest. Thanks for sharing.
I also just wanted to point out to people who watch my stuff but don't know about Edible Acres... go check him out. Seriously, his content is incredible. Of course finish my video here first, but then go spend hours watching Sean's stuff too. What an inspiration!
I've always wondered why people place a plant in the yard that grows 6 feet tall and constantly fight to keep it below 3 inches. Where is the sense in that?
@Michele Walburn Here is some perspective on the brainwashing that we undergo in the suburbs... Before I moved out here to the country, I was a true green chemlawn guy. It was super important to me that my neighbours saw me as a positive asset to the neighbourhood. One of the quickest ways to look like "a problem" was to have a weedy lawn. It makes me look like a lazy person. I was signed up with a company called green lawn. They would spray chemicals to make sure not a single dandelion or clover could exist on my perfect carpet. My lawn was truly remarkable, and I felt pride in it. This is because my focus was on making sure everyone around me was proud to have me as their neighbour. Looking back now, I have literally no idea where this came from. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and very resistant to brainwashing. I'm a skeptic by nature, likely coming from my background in science as my profession. Now, I think it's insane to spend money and carbon and chemical pollution to grow an ornamental carpet. That success for my carpet means disaster for bees. That I would care more about this grass that did nothing for me, than the dandelion and clover that feeds insects, and plantain that heals people and purslane that is actually delicious. My "lawn" here in the country is almost pure clover, dandelion and creeping Charlie. While it's not as "spectacular" as my old brainwashed sodgrass suburb ornamental carpet, it still looks decent when mowed. Of course I often let it flower to feed bees until my food forest flowers come up. Anyways, long story short, but don't underestimate how much money is being poured into brainwashing people into thinking they need a perfect lawn in order to be a valued member of their community.
Fighting HOA is all about mimicry. If your food garden is hidden inside ornamental looking landscape, they won't care. So many edible plants are beautiful.
Canadian Permaculture Legacy elderberry cuttings growing in the basement at the moment. The front yard gets the sun so they will be right in front of the house, then blueberry bushes in pots and lots of stuff in the " flower bed"
Well, I'm not sheet mulching. Where I live, getting woodchips is hard, you can't get loads easily from arborists. So, I'm doing swales on contour, planting trees behind the berms (not on the berm), and using them to capture water. I have some thornless honey locusts and black locusts along with the fruit trees. I'm also planting cover crops like clover, scattering wildflower seeds, and some of the grass that is already there. I'm planting lupines, comfrey, and a few more herbs. I'm also planting blueberry bushes, blackberries, and some strawberries. Sheet mulching is not the only way!
Thanks for such great resources! I’ve been trying to learn on my own how to start a food forest in a land I just bought here in Costa Rica (should be easier to grow than Canada I guess haha) and I’m now binge watching all your videos. Hoping to start in the coming weeks! I’m already trying to find wood chips here or other sources for mulch. Thanks again, you are inspiring a lot of young people like me!
Great! Just remember that all this stuff works the same here as there. Its all about building life in the soil, protecting and feeding it. The plants are the consequence of healthy soils. Its all the same anywhere on the planet. Maximize energy inputs that fall on your land. Then prevent them from leaving.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy that’s true!! In the rainforest here, all the leaves that fall constantly act as the forests own mulch, so it feeds itself like you say! And it’s filled with such biodiversity, you lift an old fallen leaf and there are a ton of things already there... It’s amazing to start understanding so many of these things. We just need to observe more and try to apply it as well. Thanks again!
Here via EdibleAcres. Thanks for this humorous and informative video AND the generous, in-depth answers you have to those who asked questions. Looking forward to checking out more content on your channel.
I'm glad to be of service to you and others. It's my entire recently discovered purpose in life to try to culturally shift people in same same way that I have shifted in the last 5-10 years. Away from isolationism in suburbia, towards reintegration of people into nature, decentralizing food production, getting people outside and talking to eachother, community building, etc. I give such long detailed answers to people now while I can, because I remember being where they are. Stuck in analysis paralysis land. To me the most satisfying thing in the world is when someone shows me pictures of their systems, that they started because my food forest inspired them. Its incredibly rewarding and extremely selfish driver on my part. It makes me feel amazing.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I totally get how you feel. When you discover something so life-changing, just plain logical and GOOD, it is hard to keep it to yoursefl.
Yeah lol, they drop a lot. Good idea to coordinate with others and share the drop. Also a good idea to have an area in the backyard to make a pile, for compost browns or future season top-ups. And if that's still too much, try to find a municipal pile that you can just fill a small bucket, or however much you want.
The cardboard kills the grass by smothering it and making sure it will die. This is SO much easier than digging it all out. It's also better than just NOT doing the cardboard, putting the woodchips down and finding out a year later that you have a patch of grass again. The soil microbiology is kept alive by eating the grass. Cardboard is perfect because it decomposes about the same time as the grass is fully done. It's also made from trees, so it feeds the fungal component of the soil - transitioning the soils towards tree and bush fungal dominated soils.
I live on a small island in the middle of a rain forest near the north end of Vancouver Island, B.C. (Zone 7b). I am surrounded by Western Red Cedar, Hemlock, Pine and Spruce. Consequently my soil is quite acidic. Alder trees fill in any openings in the canopy. My 1/3 acre is about 50% sunny due to trees which have been cleared. Should I use wood chips for mulch made from these acidic trees or should I try to find some mulched Alder to prep my soil for my future food forest? Thank you for opening my eyes on how to mimic nature. I just subbed and for the first time on any channel, I 'rang the bell'.
Haha thanks for ringing the bell. :) Yes, you can use chips from the local trees. Even though the pines are quite acidic, it's all in the needles, and if your soil is already at an equilibrium from thousands of years of pine needle mulch, then there's no harm to be done adding more. Additionally, it's going to be very very hard to change it more alkaline even if you wanted to. The best way would be to use any ash from a fire and spread that around - just be careful to not overdo it, because you can create some salts issues that may last for quite a long time. As far as acidic soil thriving plants, check out stuff like: Azaleas Gardenias Blueberry Bushes Hydrangeas Lychee Tree Foxglove Lewisia Heath Heather Thimbleberry Salal Huckleberry
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks so much for your response. We have tons of mulch at our transfer station that I can pick up for a small donation. The list you gave is very helpful, we already have Salal, Thimbleberry, Huckleberry and Salmonberry wild on our property. I love berries and plan to add many more. You are a great inspiration.
Definitely at some point, I'm just not sure when. It will likely be in the fall. I have about 11,000 trees to plant this spring, and finishing the pond, repairing the damage from building the pond (machinery). Keep an eye on the channel and I will make a video and mention it. And worst cases leave a comment mid summer on one of my videos and I will give you an update.
I live in the southeast US, in east Tennessee. Here, we have red, clay-like dirt. Can I still plant all of our vegetables, trees, and berries this way, directly in the ground? How does one farm in clay? Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
The solution to working with clay are threefold: roots, worms and time. You need to break the soil up, and at the same time add organic matter. Roots are the best way to do this, and we want it to happen VERY fast (on nature's timescale). Nature may take hundreds of years to break this up, but we can do it in a season or two. Daikon radish. This thing is a beast of a root crop. Go google it now. Look at the size of that freakin thing. Yours won't get that big this year, bit over time they will. So you sow these daikons, mulch them with 6 inches of woodchips (make sure the leaves come up first and you don't smother it). Then end of season, you leave them in the ground to rot and feed worms. You have done 2 things. You have made giant bowling pin sized aeration and water draining holes, with networks of fine root hair holes all through it. This bowling pin sized radish will now get eaten by worms. They will multiply, dig more, and poop. Their poop becomes soil which brings in more soil life. You basically take 1 hour to scatter seeds and rake them in. 1 hour to mulch. And you just hired a team of diggers to break up your clay for you, for a year. Keep doing that until you can plant other things in the soil and they do well. Try a little each year.. tomatoes here, peppers there, but understand the 3rd component. TIME. If you keep doing this, your soils will get better year over year and you will have the best soil in your whole state. Well, not the best, because some people know this trick and do it already :)
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy wow thanks for your response! That's totally doable. I can't wait to try it and see the results. What you are doing is really awesome, and it's very generous of you to share everything you have learned with us. Thank you.
I just read a comment you made on a Vice video. I wasn't able to comment there, but I did come over to your channel to learn!! I want my front yard to be a "food forest" as you called it!! I am in southern Arizona though... Desert, 🏜, desert, lol! Will you still have info for someone like me?
Permaculture and food forest core concepts are the same everywhere. The difference will be in the specific plants I use for the same functions. You will just use drought tolerant plants and I use cold hardy plants. For my bush layer, I may use Haskaps, but you may use Yuca. You may want a Mallow like Poppy Mallow and I can't grow that (I wish), but we can both grow dutch white clover and sweet potato. Plant differences aside, the core functions and principles are all the same, because we are trying to accomplish the same thing. Slow, spread l, sink and store every ounce of water that comes into our property. Protect and encourage soil life through heavy mulching. Building organic material into soils by chopping and dropping our herbaceous layer and nitrogen fixers. Composting, swales, nutrient cycling, mulching, plant roles and functions, pollination, wildlife attracting, beneficial insects, integrated pest control, all these things are the same in the arctic and the equator. Because in the end, permaculture comes down to maximizing life and the things life needs to survive. Energy, nutrient, water, sun. We just build the system so that nature takes over, whereas conventional agriculture destroys it all, then naturally tries to provide it. This is both expensive and stupid.
So at about 7:15 and in a few glitches in the related shot, some trees seem to actually be browner than immediately shown - have you colour corrected your videos to amplify the positive effect, or is it just a random video glitch?
Probably just a video glitch. I just shoot and upload. My old phone camera did this weird thing with trailing colors. I'm not sure if it is because some of the glass was cracked from my kids dropping my phone every day.
Hello, did you find a difference between bare root trees/bushes versus potted. I'm getting stuck and just want to get something planted. I have a linden tree in front and want to get some bushes planted. I decided on haskaps (thanks for the recommend lol) currant and maybe goji not sure. It is end of June in Denver, CO shoudl I just go for it and get whatever and stop thinking so much and just get to planting or is it worth a bit of waiting? Thank yooou!
I do notice a difference between bare root and pots. The bare root trees are typically bought younger. Bare root trees that I have bought are usually 1 year old trees, sometimes 2 years old. Pots are usually 3 to 5 year old trees. However, after roughly 3 years or so the bare root trees have caught up and are starting to surpass the potted trees. So ideally, if someone has the ability to have some patience, I think getting younger trees bare root is the ideal way. But that being said, I think it's important to get started as soon as possible. That's why in this video here I say to get a "victory tree" that is a bit older, to get that immediate payback. For your specific situation, you could get say 2 or 3 bushes now, them pick up another couple in the spring next year. I'm guessing your "time of concern" is the winter more than hot summers? I would think you get both, but the winter is probably the more concerning time? So ideal planting time is probably spring. So try to do most of your planting then, but its okay to get a thing or two in non ideal times.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I'm ok getting past the immediate gratification. I think the JUST PLANT!!!! Way takes away any insecurity and its like just get something in the damn soil that's all you have to do.... the rest can be worked out:) I think I know what I need to do!
Oh my gosh, hilarious. You see, I say stupid stuff all the time. It is almost a game to find it. I will sometimes be editing my videos and I say raspberries instead of strawberries. My mind was thinking strawberries my voice just said raspberries. My latest video, how to plant 150 trees has a lot of it in there. I was super tired that day, planting trees all day, and I was doing digging for the pond also. Good catch on 11 in the afternoon lol.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy understandable, you're putting in some solid work! You've sparked a curiosity to gardening and I learnt heaps from your reddit bestof post. Keep it up :)
Yes, but each food forest section should be lined up parallel across the hill. Even better, instead of just making beds on contour, you can dig a very shallow but wide ditch on contour. The dirt from this ditch is then placed on the downhill side of the trench, making a berm. This is called a swale. I talk about swales in many videos. Look up my first video ever, with a title of " a quick tour." I discuss swales in that video right at the start.
Woodchips do so many things. First and most important is they feed mushrooms and develop a fungal dominated topsoil. This is important when growing woody based plants like bushes and trees. I go over many other reasons why they are good in this video here: ua-cam.com/video/cFLyGVhu0bY/v-deo.html Definitely check that out.
Hey bud, this is a great video and a great initiative. If I can do anything let me know,...we in cities don't have a lot of land so can you focus on some house plants too?
This is really good. However I think parts of your video quality might drive some people away. You could play with your video editing software's export settings and maybe get a better visual result. Even if you get an initially huge file which takes forever to upload, once it's on youtube you can always delete it.
I know. My biggest struggle is that I dont do this for a living, but work a full time job with a wife and three kids and a hobby that takes a ton of time also! I also and a very small UA-cam channel, so I can't really justify spending a ton of money and time on the video side. I know that kind of limits my growth for now, but my other job simply pays too much for me to go all-in for making UA-cam gardening videos to a few k subs. If this channel grows more and more I will look into dedicating more time to it. For now I'm using video editing software on my phone (it is what I have available when I have available time - lunch at work and waiting for kids hockey games in my car). Thanks for the feedback. I am getting a bit better though. I will get better as time goes by.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy That is completely understandable (actually pretty impressive work considering you did it on a phone then). I know time is a major limiting factor, but if money is also a factor, consider looking into open source video editors (they are free). Maybe something like shotcut. Either way, I really enjoy your content and look forward to applying the lessons learned from your videos.
Oooh thanks for the suggestion. I will look into it. Now that I am at home more (coronavirus lockdowns), I can maybe do some editing on a PC with better software).
I think....eating insects would solve a lot of stuff. Let's start the recipes and make them better! Insects can eat the plants and stuff that we can't. Trees and things take a lot right? Good info. I'll look through it.
My kids thought it would be funny to show how grass sucks because of a pooping dog. They love it, so thats good enough for me. They laugh every time they see it. And I like listening to them laugh.
I kill every plant that I touch, other than trees. My mom want even allow me to water her plants. I don't understand it. I can get the smallest, sickest, most injured critter healthy, but can't grow a strawberry? Help me please.
Well I would need to know details, but the easiest answer is that plants evolved inside ecosystems. Then humans come and remove them from these and put them in isolated containers. As soon as we do, we now need to provide the plants the things that the billion moving parts of the ecosystem was providing it.
Some people have gotten really talented at it, and know what chemical slurries to give plants, in what doses and what timings in order to do a poor but good enough job of keeping the plant alive. Even a weak plant in a pot will look decent.
But a new gardener stands no chance. Even myself, I will struggle to properly tend to the micromanagement required to keep potted plants perfectly happy.
But what I DO KNOW is that nature already has this on lockdown. And natural forests do not need a human coming by every day to apply the correct dosage of chemicals to keep the forest alive.
So the #1 secret to outdoor gardening is to mimic the forest. Create an ecosystem. Then remove the human and let nature do what nature does. Grow the heck out of stuff.
Biggest secrets...
Mulch. The forest drops leaves and trees and leaves them there. It doesnt rake them away. This is nutrient cycling, and we need to allow it. So shred leaves and put them down. Get woodchips and put them down.
Stop disturbing soil. If we think the above ground ecosystemson the earth are complex and diverse they cant hold a candle to what happens underground. Look at forest soil under a microscope and you will understand what I mean. Forest soil under a microscope looks like pond water. Full of life. So stop disturbing soil and causing soil life apocalypses regularly. Plant stuff, cover the soil, protect the life, then walk away.
IPC, integrated pest control. Some pests develop resistance to chemicals. But pests dont develop resistance to getting their heads ripped off by a predator. So if you get aphids, your correct response isnt to remove them. Pest target the weak gazelle, and it's part of the cycle of life. Instead, your reaction should be to leave them there, and plant more diversity to attract their predator. I.e. you dont have an aphid problem, you have a lack of green lacewing problem. I did a video recently exactly on this.
Okay, so now you create an ecosystem, you are now in cheat mode, because you will have lush vibrant gardens and will do zero work to maintain it. That is because you have a labour force of a billion workers, all doing your job for you.
The secret trick to gardening is to delegate.
But plants in pots? I'm not the guy to ask, because my solution to that is to take that plant, stick it in the ground, give it friends, mulch the soil, and let nature take over. Obviously this gets infinitely easier the more established the ecosystem that you plant it inside has become.
This is a snowball that builds year after year, in perpetuity.
Its probably your moisturizers or soap, the de-facto governments employ a range of undetectable and detectable tactics to discourage us agrarianly inclined individuals.
Let it run wild a bit.
@@markj6442 de facto govt. Well I wish I knew the truth. One hand you have right wingers saying climate change is some global conspiracy by the defacto govt and then we say the opposite.
Both can't be true can it.
@@CountingStars333 its just climate engineering like project solar shield by Harvard university
Am 69 and started an urban backyard food forest last year, your video on soil growth flipped my script. Seen tons of videos on above had skipped most every one of yours looking more and more for similar hardiness zone info. All good with that, but u look at big picture key essentials. Deeply appreciative of your straightforward education and giving the "why's" and "mistakes or redirects" . Importance of planting cover crops so no bare soil is a big missing area in most basics others share. Would like to see more on this seemingly unexciting topic. So anxious like many to have more victories. While planting 6 fruit trees and several bushes, and dozens of native pollinators for first time I also redid veg garden to 2 raised bed with square foot garden planning. The beds are big disappointment no growth and squirrels and slugs destroying 90% seedlings. Composting for decades fairly ineffectively, now doing no-dig and sheet mulching which is so much better! A year waiting and got a "Chip drop". The tangible victories are mostly with growing knowledge and more pollinators where all I saw for 15 years were cabbage moths. Currently fairly overwhelmed with planting design elements: maximizing water conservation, best location for trees,, guild options; what can I do in front yard most all shade. These last topics are part of my ask of you in the future. Meanwhile I am watching, rewatching all your videos. Thanks keep up the flow, filling a big need here. Also dialogue in comments section is deep dive hive stuff, never seen anything on YT quite like it, but the topics are also vital to me.
Thank you so much, what a wonderful comment. Indeed there is so much to learn. Just make sure it doesn't paralyze you. Learn enough and then just keep doing, trying, learning learning adapting as you learn more from others and from your land at the same time. Best of luck!
Came from reddit. Awesome content!!
Thanks Andrew! I'm still new to video making, but slowly getting a bit better.
Lifegoals once I have a home!
Make it happen!
Wonderful video......I’m fifty years a gardener and this year I’m branching out from flowers and roses into a vegetable garden. Less lawn! Yahoo!! I’ve subscribed! Love the video!
I'm honored to have you watching my food forest! It will be a super fun spring, I can't wait.
Your reference to a victory tree is particularly relevant this year. I started growing and tending food crops in my fifth of an acre back in March when seeds were in short supply and the employees at my local big box store were labeled essential workers. I know that you intended another meaning and I respect the reverence that you have for your food forest. Thanks for sharing.
A very nice perspective:)
Great info here. This is a really nice primer for folks on kickstarting the lawn removal process!
Hey look, a celebrity! Thanks for taking time out of your day to watch!
I also just wanted to point out to people who watch my stuff but don't know about Edible Acres... go check him out. Seriously, his content is incredible.
Of course finish my video here first, but then go spend hours watching Sean's stuff too. What an inspiration!
I've always wondered why people place a plant in the yard that grows 6 feet tall and constantly fight to keep it below 3 inches. Where is the sense in that?
@Michele Walburn Here is some perspective on the brainwashing that we undergo in the suburbs...
Before I moved out here to the country, I was a true green chemlawn guy. It was super important to me that my neighbours saw me as a positive asset to the neighbourhood. One of the quickest ways to look like "a problem" was to have a weedy lawn. It makes me look like a lazy person.
I was signed up with a company called green lawn. They would spray chemicals to make sure not a single dandelion or clover could exist on my perfect carpet. My lawn was truly remarkable, and I felt pride in it. This is because my focus was on making sure everyone around me was proud to have me as their neighbour.
Looking back now, I have literally no idea where this came from. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and very resistant to brainwashing. I'm a skeptic by nature, likely coming from my background in science as my profession.
Now, I think it's insane to spend money and carbon and chemical pollution to grow an ornamental carpet. That success for my carpet means disaster for bees. That I would care more about this grass that did nothing for me, than the dandelion and clover that feeds insects, and plantain that heals people and purslane that is actually delicious.
My "lawn" here in the country is almost pure clover, dandelion and creeping Charlie. While it's not as "spectacular" as my old brainwashed sodgrass suburb ornamental carpet, it still looks decent when mowed. Of course I often let it flower to feed bees until my food forest flowers come up.
Anyways, long story short, but don't underestimate how much money is being poured into brainwashing people into thinking they need a perfect lawn in order to be a valued member of their community.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Great story ... I guess knownledge is power, and people desesperatly need more knownledge about nature
Gonna have to get creative to keep the HOA at bay, but already started the cardboard in my tiny 16'x16' backyard.
Fighting HOA is all about mimicry. If your food garden is hidden inside ornamental looking landscape, they won't care. So many edible plants are beautiful.
Canadian Permaculture Legacy elderberry cuttings growing in the basement at the moment. The front yard gets the sun so they will be right in front of the house, then blueberry bushes in pots and lots of stuff in the " flower bed"
Well, I'm not sheet mulching. Where I live, getting woodchips is hard, you can't get loads easily from arborists.
So, I'm doing swales on contour, planting trees behind the berms (not on the berm), and using them to capture water. I have some thornless honey locusts and black locusts along with the fruit trees.
I'm also planting cover crops like clover, scattering wildflower seeds, and some of the grass that is already there.
I'm planting lupines, comfrey, and a few more herbs. I'm also planting blueberry bushes, blackberries, and some strawberries.
Sheet mulching is not the only way!
I just discovered your channel. I really enjoy the great information.
Awesome thanks 😊
You are the most passionate person I've ever seen, regarding biology. Thank you.
Thanks for such great resources! I’ve been trying to learn on my own how to start a food forest in a land I just bought here in Costa Rica (should be easier to grow than Canada I guess haha) and I’m now binge watching all your videos. Hoping to start in the coming weeks! I’m already trying to find wood chips here or other sources for mulch. Thanks again, you are inspiring a lot of young people like me!
Great! Just remember that all this stuff works the same here as there. Its all about building life in the soil, protecting and feeding it. The plants are the consequence of healthy soils.
Its all the same anywhere on the planet. Maximize energy inputs that fall on your land. Then prevent them from leaving.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy that’s true!! In the rainforest here, all the leaves that fall constantly act as the forests own mulch, so it feeds itself like you say! And it’s filled with such biodiversity, you lift an old fallen leaf and there are a ton of things already there... It’s amazing to start understanding so many of these things. We just need to observe more and try to apply it as well. Thanks again!
Great video! Glad I'm doing some things right. I'm just 5 months into my food forest and I'm loving every minute❤️
That's awesome! Make sure to take lots of photos. It is very fun to look back at how much it has grown!
Thanks for sharing this information! I've subscribed
Wow what a great video super informative! Subbed
Thanks for joining the army! Ding the bell! Someone get this man a wheat germ kombucha!
Here via EdibleAcres. Thanks for this humorous and informative video AND the generous, in-depth answers you have to those who asked questions. Looking forward to checking out more content on your channel.
I'm glad to be of service to you and others. It's my entire recently discovered purpose in life to try to culturally shift people in same same way that I have shifted in the last 5-10 years. Away from isolationism in suburbia, towards reintegration of people into nature, decentralizing food production, getting people outside and talking to eachother, community building, etc.
I give such long detailed answers to people now while I can, because I remember being where they are. Stuck in analysis paralysis land. To me the most satisfying thing in the world is when someone shows me pictures of their systems, that they started because my food forest inspired them. Its incredibly rewarding and extremely selfish driver on my part. It makes me feel amazing.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I totally get how you feel. When you discover something so life-changing, just plain logical and GOOD, it is hard to keep it to yoursefl.
ChipDrop will drop off 20 cubic yards at a time, just FYI for fellow urbanites :) that's like, 10 of 4'x8' garden boxes worth of volume.
Yeah lol, they drop a lot. Good idea to coordinate with others and share the drop. Also a good idea to have an area in the backyard to make a pile, for compost browns or future season top-ups.
And if that's still too much, try to find a municipal pile that you can just fill a small bucket, or however much you want.
Can you link the Video to the detailed Video about sheet mulching
It links in the video itself, but depending on how you watch it, it may not show up. I will add a link in the video description.
Amazing.
Thank you. Did I miss something ? What is the cardboard for ?
The cardboard kills the grass by smothering it and making sure it will die. This is SO much easier than digging it all out. It's also better than just NOT doing the cardboard, putting the woodchips down and finding out a year later that you have a patch of grass again.
The soil microbiology is kept alive by eating the grass. Cardboard is perfect because it decomposes about the same time as the grass is fully done. It's also made from trees, so it feeds the fungal component of the soil - transitioning the soils towards tree and bush fungal dominated soils.
I live on a small island in the middle of a rain forest near the north end of Vancouver Island, B.C. (Zone 7b). I am surrounded by Western Red Cedar, Hemlock, Pine and Spruce. Consequently my soil is quite acidic. Alder trees fill in any openings in the canopy. My 1/3 acre is about 50% sunny due to trees which have been cleared. Should I use wood chips for mulch made from these acidic trees or should I try to find some mulched Alder to prep my soil for my future food forest? Thank you for opening my eyes on how to mimic nature. I just subbed and for the first time on any channel, I 'rang the bell'.
Haha thanks for ringing the bell. :)
Yes, you can use chips from the local trees. Even though the pines are quite acidic, it's all in the needles, and if your soil is already at an equilibrium from thousands of years of pine needle mulch, then there's no harm to be done adding more. Additionally, it's going to be very very hard to change it more alkaline even if you wanted to. The best way would be to use any ash from a fire and spread that around - just be careful to not overdo it, because you can create some salts issues that may last for quite a long time.
As far as acidic soil thriving plants, check out stuff like:
Azaleas
Gardenias
Blueberry Bushes
Hydrangeas
Lychee Tree
Foxglove
Lewisia
Heath
Heather
Thimbleberry
Salal
Huckleberry
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks so much for your response. We have tons of mulch at our transfer station that I can pick up for a small donation. The list you gave is very helpful, we already have Salal, Thimbleberry, Huckleberry and Salmonberry wild on our property. I love berries and plan to add many more. You are a great inspiration.
Hi Keith, I am in York Region and would love to visit for a tour. Are you part of any of the gardening tours this coming spring/summer? Thanks!
Definitely at some point, I'm just not sure when. It will likely be in the fall. I have about 11,000 trees to plant this spring, and finishing the pond, repairing the damage from building the pond (machinery). Keep an eye on the channel and I will make a video and mention it. And worst cases leave a comment mid summer on one of my videos and I will give you an update.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy That's great! Thanks. Can't wait to see all the new additions. Learning so much here!
I live in the southeast US, in east Tennessee. Here, we have red, clay-like dirt. Can I still plant all of our vegetables, trees, and berries this way, directly in the ground? How does one farm in clay? Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
The solution to working with clay are threefold: roots, worms and time.
You need to break the soil up, and at the same time add organic matter. Roots are the best way to do this, and we want it to happen VERY fast (on nature's timescale). Nature may take hundreds of years to break this up, but we can do it in a season or two.
Daikon radish.
This thing is a beast of a root crop. Go google it now. Look at the size of that freakin thing. Yours won't get that big this year, bit over time they will.
So you sow these daikons, mulch them with 6 inches of woodchips (make sure the leaves come up first and you don't smother it). Then end of season, you leave them in the ground to rot and feed worms.
You have done 2 things. You have made giant bowling pin sized aeration and water draining holes, with networks of fine root hair holes all through it. This bowling pin sized radish will now get eaten by worms. They will multiply, dig more, and poop. Their poop becomes soil which brings in more soil life.
You basically take 1 hour to scatter seeds and rake them in. 1 hour to mulch. And you just hired a team of diggers to break up your clay for you, for a year.
Keep doing that until you can plant other things in the soil and they do well. Try a little each year.. tomatoes here, peppers there, but understand the 3rd component. TIME.
If you keep doing this, your soils will get better year over year and you will have the best soil in your whole state. Well, not the best, because some people know this trick and do it already :)
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy wow thanks for your response! That's totally doable. I can't wait to try it and see the results. What you are doing is really awesome, and it's very generous of you to share everything you have learned with us. Thank you.
I just read a comment you made on a Vice video. I wasn't able to comment there, but I did come over to your channel to learn!! I want my front yard to be a "food forest" as you called it!! I am in southern Arizona though... Desert, 🏜, desert, lol! Will you still have info for someone like me?
Permaculture and food forest core concepts are the same everywhere. The difference will be in the specific plants I use for the same functions. You will just use drought tolerant plants and I use cold hardy plants.
For my bush layer, I may use Haskaps, but you may use Yuca. You may want a Mallow like Poppy Mallow and I can't grow that (I wish), but we can both grow dutch white clover and sweet potato.
Plant differences aside, the core functions and principles are all the same, because we are trying to accomplish the same thing. Slow, spread l, sink and store every ounce of water that comes into our property. Protect and encourage soil life through heavy mulching. Building organic material into soils by chopping and dropping our herbaceous layer and nitrogen fixers.
Composting, swales, nutrient cycling, mulching, plant roles and functions, pollination, wildlife attracting, beneficial insects, integrated pest control, all these things are the same in the arctic and the equator. Because in the end, permaculture comes down to maximizing life and the things life needs to survive. Energy, nutrient, water, sun. We just build the system so that nature takes over, whereas conventional agriculture destroys it all, then naturally tries to provide it. This is both expensive and stupid.
Hahaha! Screw lawn. Yeah!
So at about 7:15 and in a few glitches in the related shot, some trees seem to actually be browner than immediately shown - have you colour corrected your videos to amplify the positive effect, or is it just a random video glitch?
Probably just a video glitch. I just shoot and upload. My old phone camera did this weird thing with trailing colors. I'm not sure if it is because some of the glass was cracked from my kids dropping my phone every day.
Hello, did you find a difference between bare root trees/bushes versus potted. I'm getting stuck and just want to get something planted. I have a linden tree in front and want to get some bushes planted. I decided on haskaps (thanks for the recommend lol) currant and maybe goji not sure. It is end of June in Denver, CO shoudl I just go for it and get whatever and stop thinking so much and just get to planting or is it worth a bit of waiting? Thank yooou!
I do notice a difference between bare root and pots. The bare root trees are typically bought younger. Bare root trees that I have bought are usually 1 year old trees, sometimes 2 years old. Pots are usually 3 to 5 year old trees. However, after roughly 3 years or so the bare root trees have caught up and are starting to surpass the potted trees. So ideally, if someone has the ability to have some patience, I think getting younger trees bare root is the ideal way.
But that being said, I think it's important to get started as soon as possible. That's why in this video here I say to get a "victory tree" that is a bit older, to get that immediate payback.
For your specific situation, you could get say 2 or 3 bushes now, them pick up another couple in the spring next year. I'm guessing your "time of concern" is the winter more than hot summers? I would think you get both, but the winter is probably the more concerning time? So ideal planting time is probably spring. So try to do most of your planting then, but its okay to get a thing or two in non ideal times.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I'm ok getting past the immediate gratification. I think the JUST PLANT!!!! Way takes away any insecurity and its like just get something in the damn soil that's all you have to do.... the rest can be worked out:) I think I know what I need to do!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy gotcha thanks! I'm going to just jump in and plant several bushes then and get my "ideal" stuff later:)
Exactly :)
2:52 11 o clock in the afternoon?
Cool video tho
I said that out loud too. What.
Oh my gosh, hilarious.
You see, I say stupid stuff all the time. It is almost a game to find it. I will sometimes be editing my videos and I say raspberries instead of strawberries. My mind was thinking strawberries my voice just said raspberries.
My latest video, how to plant 150 trees has a lot of it in there. I was super tired that day, planting trees all day, and I was doing digging for the pond also.
Good catch on 11 in the afternoon lol.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy understandable, you're putting in some solid work! You've sparked a curiosity to gardening and I learnt heaps from your reddit bestof post. Keep it up :)
What you recommend to do with a lawn that is on a hill? Is the procedure mostly the same?
Yes, but each food forest section should be lined up parallel across the hill. Even better, instead of just making beds on contour, you can dig a very shallow but wide ditch on contour. The dirt from this ditch is then placed on the downhill side of the trench, making a berm. This is called a swale. I talk about swales in many videos. Look up my first video ever, with a title of " a quick tour." I discuss swales in that video right at the start.
I dont yet understand why you need woodchops?
Woodchips do so many things. First and most important is they feed mushrooms and develop a fungal dominated topsoil. This is important when growing woody based plants like bushes and trees.
I go over many other reasons why they are good in this video here:
ua-cam.com/video/cFLyGVhu0bY/v-deo.html
Definitely check that out.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks a lot man, i appreciate it! And I admire your work and effort!
Hey bud, this is a great video and a great initiative. If I can do anything let me know,...we in cities don't have a lot of land so can you focus on some house plants too?
This is really good. However I think parts of your video quality might drive some people away. You could play with your video editing software's export settings and maybe get a better visual result. Even if you get an initially huge file which takes forever to upload, once it's on youtube you can always delete it.
I know. My biggest struggle is that I dont do this for a living, but work a full time job with a wife and three kids and a hobby that takes a ton of time also!
I also and a very small UA-cam channel, so I can't really justify spending a ton of money and time on the video side. I know that kind of limits my growth for now, but my other job simply pays too much for me to go all-in for making UA-cam gardening videos to a few k subs.
If this channel grows more and more I will look into dedicating more time to it. For now I'm using video editing software on my phone (it is what I have available when I have available time - lunch at work and waiting for kids hockey games in my car).
Thanks for the feedback. I am getting a bit better though. I will get better as time goes by.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy That is completely understandable (actually pretty impressive work considering you did it on a phone then). I know time is a major limiting factor, but if money is also a factor, consider looking into open source video editors (they are free). Maybe something like shotcut.
Either way, I really enjoy your content and look forward to applying the lessons learned from your videos.
Oooh thanks for the suggestion. I will look into it.
Now that I am at home more (coronavirus lockdowns), I can maybe do some editing on a PC with better software).
I think....eating insects would solve a lot of stuff. Let's start the recipes and make them better! Insects can eat the plants and stuff that we can't. Trees and things take a lot right?
Good info. I'll look through it.
You can't eat the grass, so get rid of it, lol
I have a great sense of humour but the pooping dog/ peach? Why this image?
My kids thought it would be funny to show how grass sucks because of a pooping dog. They love it, so thats good enough for me. They laugh every time they see it. And I like listening to them laugh.
Well that makes sense! I kept thinking I missed the video where dog poop helps peaches grow.
Reddit comments brought here.
AY WTF
Its a little out of sync. (Voice)