Hey everyone! I'm Rob Greenfield, and
today I'm going to teach you how to turn
your yard into an abundant garden that
produces delicious and nutritious food for
you, right at home.
And I'm going to do that through my example.
Where I'm standing, right now, two years
ago was just a lawn and now it is an
abundant food garden.
And this is actually the first lawn that
I ever turned into a garden.
So, it shows what can be done.
Now, I'm here in Central Florida, and I
want to show you what I had to start with.
We're talking about...anybody who lives in
Central Florida knows that we're bascially
working with straight sand.
Wherever you are, you're going to have a
different situation and you're going to
have to adapt this to your climate in
your region.
But this model that I am showing today
is something that can be, generally,
done across the United States.
I'm going to keep things pretty simple for
you today to help you really get started.
Just two years ago I had never really
hardly grown any food and all of this came
from just learning the basics that I'm
going to share with you today.
So there are 6 basic ingredients to this method.
Cardboard.
Mulch.
Soil or compost.
Sun.
Water.
and then plants.
Those are the 6 main ingredients.
And I want to say, this is my method, but
there are many methods out there that you can do.
This is really focused on working with
nature, rather than against it. So, I'm
going to get into each of those 6
ingredients and break them down a little
bit for you to help you start your garden.
The first ingredient is cardboard.
And it's as simple as getting cardboard
and doing a layer all across the whole
area that you are going to turn into a garden.
Now, you don't need to buy the cardboard.
You can get it from recycling dumpsters.
So, that could be grocery stores, liquor
stores, or if you want to make your job
really easy, get it from appliance stores
where they have huge boxes.
And, Ideally, take out the tape or the
staples. That cardboard is going to
suppress the grass and kill it and break
down along with the second ingredient
which is mulch.
What you do with mulch is you get a thick
layer, ideally about a foot, and you lay
that down over the cardboard everywhere
that you are turning the yard into a garden.
Again, this is not a resource that you
have to buy.
Actually, the idea is to be able to do
this in a very inexpensive manner and use
mostly wasted, local resources.
So, the best way to get mulch is from tree
cutting and tree trimming companies.
Their waste product is the shredded trees.
A lot of the times they take that to the
landfill, and instead, you can get them to
dump it right on your yard and get it for free.
So, why mulch?
Well, let me show you.
First of all, this is the method that
actually kills your lawns so that you can
grow food instead.
But mulch does a lot of other things as well.
So, just pulling this mulch back, you've
got the woody mulch on top, and just going
back a little ways, you can see this mulch
already is breaking down into a rich,
organic matter. So, the mulch does a few things.
It holds in moisture. Every time it
rains, rather than it running straight off
a lawn, it has all this area to soak in.
This is nice and moist even though I'm not
irrigating or anything like that, and it's
very dry out right now.
It also creates an environment for
important microorganisms and
mychorrhizal fungi.
Just imagine if you're out in the blazing
heat or if you have a wall in the blazing
heat, things aren't going to grow there.
They need protection, so that bacteria
that you want in your garden, and that
fungi you want, needs protection.
Over time, all of this mulch breaks down
into the nutrients that you need.
Now, the third ingredient is what I am
holding, right here. It's what my mulch
turned into, which is soil.
Depending on where you are you are going
to have very different scenarios. Where
I'm from in Wisconsin, for example,
there's a lot of rich soil already.
So soil wouldn't need to be brought in
there in a lot of scenarios.
But when I started here, as I said, I just
had a sandy lawn. So I needed to bring
in compost or soil. So, where can you get
compost and soil? You, ideally, want to
get organic if possible. Now, what I did,
here in Florida, is there
is a mushroom farm, or mushroom factory,
basically, not far from here. And their
spent material makes great compost.
And so I was able to get a lot of that
really inexpensively dumped by the truck
rather than having to buy bags.
You can get it, a lot of times, from your
municipality. The ones that pick up yard
waste often will turn that into compost
that can be picked up for free by residents.
So, that may be one of your main expenses
to getting the garden going, but it all
depends on where you are.
Now, talking about something that's not
expensive, which is ingredient number 4
and that is the sun.
It is the simplest and easiest of all the
ingredients, probably, but there are still
important things to know.
Especially for beginner gardeners, I would
recommend full sun. Where I am in Central
Florida, where it's a really hot sun, that
can be 5-6 hours. But in more of the
temperate areas, you're talking 7-8 hours.
Ideally, you also get morning sun and
less of the afternoon or the evening
hotter sun. So, this garden is perfect
because the sun rises in the east over the
garden and then it's falling behind the
house in the afternoon.
Now, ingredient number 5 is also something
that can be free. You probably have heard
of it before. Water.
Water, of course, is an absolutely
essential ingredient.
I'm going to show you the two systems I
have, which are rain water harvesting and drip irrigation.
I would absolutely recommend rainwater harvesting.
It's extremely simple.
You simply need to collect the water off
of the roof, down a downspout, like it
normally would, and instead of sending it
off into the street, have it collect into
buckets, barrels, whatever that may be.
It's extremely simple and you and you can
rainwater harvest in every climate, even
in the desert you can rainwater harvest.
In fact, that's one of the most important
places to do it.
Now, drip irrigation can actually be
connected to rainwater harvesting units,
but it's a little more complicated.
Generally, you just have it connected to
your hose, your spigot. This is pressured
water, whether it's from the city or well,
or something of that sort.
And drip irrigation, what's great about it
is it's super efficient both in water
usage, it uses a lot less water, but it
also save a lot of time.
And how it works is you can either have
it set up without a timer, where you have
to come out and just turn it on or off.
Or if you have a timer, you can set the
days and the times that it waters and the
great thing about it is you can even go
out of town and your garden is still being watered.
So, water comes out through this black
pipe and over to the drip irrigation line
so I'm going to take you back out to the
garden to see where the water actually comes out.
So, here are the drip lines. And on this
one, about every 6 inches, there's a
little hole and the water, literally, just
drips right out. And by doing that, it's
actually targeted where you want it, not
spreading water across the whole area.
Some of the big keys to watering well, are
watering in the morning. Ideally, before
it's even light out, rather than the water
evaporating in the heat of the day.
And then watering directly rather than
overhead. Overhead is the most wasteful
way, where you water lawns with sprinklers.
That's the most wasteful way to use water.
Now, when you are establishing a garden
like this, it's generally to say the first
30 days to 45 days, that's when you need
to water the most as you're establishing the plants.
But if you set things up well, then you
can do this with very little irrigation or
even no irrigation, and that really comes
down to what you're planting.
And that is ingredient number 6. Plants.
There is an incredible amount that I
could go into here, but I'm going to keep
it just to the basics of how to turn your
yard into a garden.
So, first of all, how to plant.
With this method, the way that you plant
the perennials, is you simply would pull
back that mulch that you laid down.
Then you're going to amend that soil that
have there with compost and you're going
to plant into that and keep the mulch
away from that plant.
Now, if you're doing annuals, you're
generally going to have much more
compost that you're planting into.
But what I really recommend is perennials.
Here is one book that I really recommend,
Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier.
I really recommend getting books that are
designed for your area.
Now, some key tips. One is to plant
densely and then you can thin out later.
And that's going to do a similar thing to
the mulch, which is prevent weeds.
Now, what about when you do have weeds?
What do you actually do with those weeds?
Do you ship them off to the city to go to
the landfill? No, I'm going to take you
over to my banana circle...my banana spot
and show you what I do with my weeds to
keep nutrients on site.
What a lot of people do with their weeds
is they bag them up and they throw them
away. But what I do with all of them, is
I make a pile, right here, I do it with bananas.
In different climates you can do this in
different manners, but I do it with the
bananas and everything from the garden
gets piled up, here. And that way all
those nutrients stay in the garden, rather
than getting rid of them.
And what we are doing, here, by building
up this soil and keeping the organic
matter on site, is that we're actually
sequestering carbon. We're taking it out
of the air and we're locking it into the ground.
So, why turn our front yards into gardens?
Well, you would, maybe, be amazed to learn
that lawns are actually the most
irrigated crop in the United States.
They use an incredible amount of water.
7 billion gallons of water per day!
They use incredible amounts of fertilizers
much of which run off into our waterway
systems and cause huge problems.
And huge amounts of pesticides that end up
in our drinking water.
So, lawns, as beautiful as they may be to
many of us, actually cause a huge
amount of destruction. And instead, we
can be using that space to produce food.
Now, during the World War I and
World War II era, of the victory garden
movement when the United States government
was, actually, promoting people to grow
food, close to half of all of our fresh
fruits and vegetables were grown right in
our own yards rather than being shipped
all over the world.
So, we've seen what could be done in the
past. We know that this can continue to
be done, which would reduce our dependence
on Big Ag, on a system that is causing so
much destruction to people, to the planet,
and to other species. And, at the same
time, we can improve our communities,
have healthy, delicious meals with our
family, with our friends, and do it right
at home and right in our communities.
(Music)
So, that is how and why to turn your yard
into a garden. I want to thank the Live
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