Follow These 3 Steps to Create A Healthy Garden In Your Own Yard
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- Опубліковано 20 лип 2022
- This video is all about how to turn your yard into a thriving garden. Instagram-worthy gardens don't just have to stay on your phone. Here are some tips & tricks on how you can have your own slice of gardening paradise.
0:50 Plastic Surgery
5:18 Breaking Soil
9:49 Making the Bed(s)
13:00 Recap
1.
I'm at our Ramona seed production farm in northeastern San Diego County, but all of this info can be applied to your own yard too. Let's start things off by looking at a plot that we are developing for seed production to start this fall.
I have a large piece of black plastic laid out. Before we take our shovels to the dirt, this plastic helps kill off some of the weeds that our crops would otherwise have to compete with. We heavily watered the area first to encourage the seeds to germinate. This silage tarp will solarize and suffocate weeds so they won't be able to grow and produce more seeds.
If you are preparing a new area of your yard to garden, you can use a much smaller piece of plastic of course. Ideally, you want to use thick, UV-resistant plastic that you are reusing, and you want to lay it out during the hottest part of the year. That's how it's going to heat up under tarp enough to kill the weeds.
If you don't have plastic on hand, cardboard is another great option. It won't solarize (because it's not going to heat up in the same way black plastic does), but it can help suppress the weeds and prevent them from getting sunlight and water. That will help you avoid getting overrun by weeds right out of the gate. No one wants to spend all their time weeding!
In the perfect scenario, you would lay down the black plastic for the hottest months of the year, then lay out an even layer of cardboard, and follow that up with a good foot or two of mulch.
2.
Once you have minimized the weeds and started to protect the soil, it comes time to actually break ground. We have another part of the farm that matches up perfectly with this next step.
If you are gardening in raised beds, you can just put those right on top of your mulch. Otherwise, you'll want to move your mulch to the side if you plan to go in-ground. We had to do some tilling because this dirt was neglected for ten years. Otherwise, the dead top layer would create a barrier.
You can use a small tiller and do some double digging. This mixes in compost, manure, and moisture right into your soil. Bermuda-free manure and compost are my favorites! All of this will allow moisture and nutrients to infiltrate more deeply into your area. You really want water getting several inches down so the microbiology of your space is full of life.
It's also important to know your soil's health by getting it tested. From there, you will know what you need to add for happy plants.
3.
Now that you have suppressed the weeds and kickstarted the LIFE in your soil, it's time to prepare your planting area.
There are lots of ways that you can create your planting area. I like rows that are wide enough for a person to comfortably walk through - and get a wheelbarrow through if needed - with hilled planting rows. It creates a clear distinction between the walking and planting areas and keeps moisture only where I want plants to grow. I can get also be really intentional with where I am placing compost, manure, worm castings, etc.
This is just one of many ways to lay out your space. If you've watched our other videos, you've seen examples of raised beds, trellises, square foot gardening, etc. There's no one way to garden, and you'll probably change things over time, and that's good!
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#Gardening - Навчання та стиль
I love these videos. Such a blessing. Thank you
Ginormous 👍🏽 I love it haha😃😃. I’m going to steal that word and use it. Keep up the great videos ✌🏼🤣
As a first-time gardener I want to thank you for all the encouragement..I feel my garden is all over the place this year. I'm looking forward to the spring. Looking forward to your top picks for spring veggies.
Great video! Your enthusiasm is contagious.
Thanks for the info , I see my hubby’s truck in the the back ground 😆 I’m up here trying to grow on mostly rock , we need to find much
Perfect timing, I gonna clean a grass area and add more growing veggies, now I prefer to water food than grass 💚
One of oyur bset edvios yte. 😍
Wise words differently a journey
This video came at the perfect time! I have a small ugly patch that used to be a garden. It has grass, weeds, a lantana I didn’t plant, and it might still have some air potato. I want to make it a zucchini/watermelon patch. I was just staring at it and sweating then decided to sit in the shade to take a break when I started watching vids.
Let the sun do some of the work for ya over the next month or so, and you'll have a great patch for those next summer :)
I’m in my first year of gardening. I started last fall.
Thank you for another awesome video and for sharing invaluable information & tips! Ginormous is a word. It was originally military slang blending giant and enormous but it’s currently an informal word ☺️
Oh really! This is awesome info. It’s like my own personal, “ Away with words”!
This is my first year in the desert of Southern California. Throughout the summer and fall I've been using deep layer mulch from my chickens to prep my garden area. Also, because I have no earthworms or red wigglers, plus I don't have enough organic material for them, I've been utilizing the flies that are so abundant here. I've created a maggot trap, the flies lay eggs on fermented chicken pellets/rotting food and the maggots convert the organic material into castings. Seriously looks like I've turned the native desert sand into the black dirt of Illinois. Also, my chickens get to dig through this maggot trap and eat the larvae. Much cheaper than spending $50 or more on a 5 pound bag of meal worms.
great video! very interesting.
Thank you for all the wonderful information. I have learned so much. I am starting to have a green thumb
I am a first year Gardener ❤️
So glad you're here! You'll find out that your garden will get better and better with time & effort. It doesn't happen all at once.
Love your videos! You make it so understandable and inspirational!!
Great information thank you 🥰
Thanks for your support!
If you buy bags of soil you can use those to kill weeds. Those bags don't tend to break down that fast in the sun as well.
Yes, great example of reusing!
i put new mulch in my garden for the first time this year and all the veggies didn’t grow as big as they normally do. someone told me newly mulched wood depletes the nitrogen in the soil😳 do you know anything about this? thank you i’m trying to learn🤗 christy
Great question, and that is true. As it breaks down, it uses nitrogen so it's important to also add compost and/or manure.
Thank you for addressing 'Tilling'! Many Gardeners, Homesteaders & Farmers HAVE TO TILL at least INITIALLY! Everyone else GET OVER YOURSELVES! Stop acting like you know someone else's situation.
Great advice. I will say however that cardboard in my experience, properly done (e.g. 4-6 inches overlap between all pieces) will kill alot of weeds, if you are doing no-dig and adding compost over top the cardboard and not planning to remove it ever (it will break down over the course of the season). It will not kill persistent perennial weeds however and rhizomatic (am I spelling this right?) ones will at most be set back, especially if they have other connected sections outside of the covered area. It will weaken quite a few persistent perennial weeds and when they finally pop through your growing material that went overtop cardboard, they are often fairly weak and easy to remove at first.
Yes, that's true about cardboard. It inhibits most weeds, but it's not going to take out the really stubborn varieties. It will just stunt them. We did the lasagna method at our other location, and it's worked well.
Great video as always! Where do you get your water and enough for the farm? By the way, love the word ginormous.
Just learned that’s not a word! Who knew? 🤣
Have you tried broadforking either instead of tilling or after an initial one time till? If so, but what is your experience with that? Many market gardeners doing 'no-till' will do this strategy and then over time reduce their use of the broadfork to either nothing or just very occasionally (I think once every few years? not sure). Perhaps this is also where always keeping living roots in the ground would come into play, so that over winter with snow and rain etc you do not get compaction.
Broadforking is a great option. I mention it in another video, but sometimes I like to do it gently (just enough to open up the soil without turning over soil) before a rain to allow moisture to get in there too. It's a good way to keep the soil from getting too compacted.
What kind of manure would you recommend for a raised bed? Thank you for another informative video.
It depends on what you're growing, but local & organic is best (what the cattle eat is what ends up in your garden)
Gophers are destroying my garden here in Ramona. How do I make them leave without using traps? Thanks
If you're doing raised beds or planting a tree, wire can protect roots. Otherwise, people say strong smells like coffee, pepper, laundry sheets, or canine urine can repel them.
I may be wrong but I believe using black plastic has an occultating effect and using clear plastic would have a solarizing effect. Occultating the soil with black plastic will allow microorganisms and worms to thrive in the top of the soil layer with no UV exposure... Solarizing with clear plastic will have a greenhouse gas effect and will kill all microorganisms and bacteria. This may be needed if you have high levels of toxicity in your soil and you need to bake it all and start over