How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden | Grow Food Not Lawns

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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gardens.

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into a garden!