Upgrade Your Worthless Landscaping! REPLACE IT With Something BETTER!

There is an epidemic spreading throughout our yards here in the United States. Worthless shrubs, trees, and bushes planted all around our homes and yards that serve no good purpose. Home builders like to call it landscaping. Do you know what I call it? Crap! If I had one dollar for every person that told me they want to plant fruit trees and edible landscaping in their yard, but they just don't have the space to do it, well, I wouldn't have to work a full-time job in addition to doing this and spending my Saturday afternoon filming this video. I could have filmed this on a Tuesday. I am doing literally everything that I can to maximize the food capacity of my yard. Around my home, literally everything is edible. In my backyard, I'm growing dwarf oranges, avocados, and lemons up against my house. The dwarf trees have tiny roots that don't threaten my foundation. On the east wall of my house, I'm growing blueberries and pineapple guavas, the perfect shrubs for foundation plantings. On the west wall, I'm growing vegetables in raised beds. And in the north, I'm growing dwarf citrus as a dooryard tree. Even the landscaping that I'm using to cover up my house's ugly electric transformer is fig trees and fruiting bananas. I want you to turn your little slice of earth into a Garden of Eden overflowing with trees and bushes producing an abundance of fruits that will feed you and your family. But many of you tell me you just don't have the available space in your yard to plant things. However, I bet if you look around, you have countless bushes, shrubs, and trees around your house, in your front yard, and in your backyard that produce nothing edible. Rip them out. Replace them with something better. You may even have dead trees and shrubs taking up space in your yard. Well, in this video, I'm going to show you how to remove those dead and replace them with something better. Something you actually want to grow that can feed you and your family and make you want to actually spend time outside. I filmed this video over the course of the entire growing season. You are going to see everything from me digging up an old dead tree to me replacing it with a brand new tree to that new tree's progress as it grew throughout the season. So, to begin, let's turn back time seven months. This tree right here is a peach tree that I planted exactly two years ago to the month and unfortunately, it has died on me and it needs to be removed. You see, I made the mistake of buying a very large bare root fruit tree and when I installed it into the ground, it took off and did well its first year but it's too big for the espalier setup that I wanted right here. So, the second year, I cut the tree all the way down because I wanted it to regrow and that way I could dictate where all the branches were going to go. Well, it couldn't handle the stress and the tree died. But nevertheless, we need to replace it and I have a replacement that just came in. And that replacement tree is a Betty peach bare root fruit tree that you see right here. This Betty peach tree was graciously provided to me by Rain Tree Nursery. Last spring, I had a nice long chat with the owners and they sent me this peach tree to replace my tree that died as a gift. It was very nice of them and they didn't have to do that. Well, over the years, many of you have asked me where is a great place to buy fruit trees online and one place that I have consistently recommended is Rain Tree Nursery. They are truly good people and they provide some of the best trees in the business. Early fall is actually the best time to order bare root fruit trees for the spring. So, I urge you to check out their website. They have one of the best selections of trees on the entire internet and if you order now, not only can you take advantage of some of their early season discounts, but you'll get the best selection of trees instead of waiting until later in the year when many of the best varieties are sold out. So, please consider supporting them. They are good people. Plus, they sent me this nifty t-shirt and my neighbor said this is totally my color. Thanks, Bob. So, when Rain Tree Nursery reached out to me and offered to provide this Betty peach tree right here to make this video, I couldn't wait to say yes. The product came quickly. It was expertly packed and the peach tree they gave me is absolutely beautiful. Look at this tree right here. This is an enormous fruit tree for a bare root tree. I mean, just look how well developed the roots are on this. Really impressive and I know as soon as I get this on the ground, since it's nice and warm here now, it's going to take off like a rocket. Now, keep in mind, I may be swapping out a peach tree for another peach tree in this video, but you can apply these principles to any kind of swap. I don't care if you're removing an old dead oak tree. I don't care if you're removing landscaping around your house or other kind of ornamentals and replacing it with something that you actually want. The procedure is the same. And the first step of the procedure is going to be if you have a bare root fruit tree, let it soak in a bucket of water to rehydrate for at least an hour. But if you can do it overnight, up to 24 hours, that would be even better. You really want to rehydrate these roots as much as possible. This tree has been in this bucket for about three hours. That's good enough for planting for my purposes. Step two is to pull back all the mulch that is around the tree that you're trying to remove. And you really want to overcompensate and pull back as much of the mulch as possible. We are going to be digging a pretty sizable hole and we don't want to mix any of that soil in with the mulch because we are going to reuse all of it. So pull back that mulch as best as humanly possible. Step number three is to dig up the old tree. Now this may not be feasible if you have something like a 50-year-old oak or pine tree growing. But if you're growing a dwarf fruit tree or some type of bush or landscaping ornamental that only has a caliper of a few inches, you will probably be able to dig up a lot of the tree. Now I'm going to dig this area back maybe about 18 to 24 inches away from the actual center of the tree. And even though all the roots have come out a lot further than that, you have to understand that since the tree is dead, all of those roots are going to break down in the soil. So there's no need to dig up all of those roots. I only need to make enough room that the new fruit tree can grow completely unencumbered for about two to three years. So if I get a pretty decent-sized root ball, by the time the new tree actually fills out that large area, so much of the old roots will have decomposed. It's not going to be an issue. So if you are cutting back a really tall oak tree or some kind of big tree that you can't dig up, as long as you clear out that ground area enough and you allow it so it can grow unencumbered for about two to three years, by the time that time goes by, a lot of the old roots will have decomposed and will no longer be an issue. So we are going to use a digging shovel to dig up the old tree and provide a pretty nice-sized hole for the new tree to go in so the new roots can grow unencumbered for at least two to three seasons. Now one thing you'll notice I'm doing is I dug a small ring around the fruit tree and then a larger ring around that. The reason why I'm doing that is because it's going to be impossible to dig up a tree like this in one single ring. I need to dig kind of like a moat around it so I can cut out all of the roots. So I'm going to do that by digging a small ring closer to the tree and then a wider ring around it, and I'm going to dig out the part in between. And holy smokes, that actually worked. It not only worked well, but it worked perfectly, like a charm. And what is absolutely insane is the roots that I have in here on this little, not even two-year-old, semi-dwarf fruit tree. Step four is going to be to remove the old tree from the hole, if it was feasible for you to dig it up. And oh, holy moly, this thing is insanely heavy. And here is the root ball that I just dug up. This is absolutely insane for only two years, but I need to get a lot of the soil off this root ball because this is good stuff and I really want to preserve it. So step five is going to be removing as much of this beautiful soil as possible from this root ball. So there is our cleaned off root ball. Step six is going to be to survey and clean up the planting hole. There is no need to remove all of those old peach roots that you can still see all around the sides of this planting hole because this planting hole is more than enough of a generous size for the new dwarf peach tree to take a hold and grow unencumbered for the next two years. Those old existing roots are going to decay and basically become compost and feed the new peach as it grows. When planting a fruit tree, I usually tell you to dig the hole twice as wide and twice as deep as needed, then backfill it in halfway so then you can loosen up the existing soil as much as possible so the new roots can weave their way through unencumbered. Well, that's totally not necessary with this planting hole because it's about five times as big as it really needs to be. So the next thing that we're going to have to do is fill this planting hole in significantly. So step seven is going to be backfilling the planting hole to the proper depth. Step eight is to physically plant the root tree. Now I have it settled equidistant between my Asian pear on the left and my apple tree on the right, eight feet in between both of them. So that'll give it plenty of room to grow. And I have the cordons that I want tied to the lower espalier cable already. Now when I placed the tree in the planting hole, I have the roots at the proper depth so when I fill in all of the soil, it will just lightly cover all of the roots. So you can see I spread out the roots kind of like in a clock pattern where they're oriented in all different directions. And then what you see right here is the root stock. You need to make sure that you do not bury the graft, which is right here. This is the root stock, this is the scion wood, and then where they meet is the graft. So the soil really shouldn't be any higher than this right here. This graft has to be exposed always. Now I'm going to fertilize the tree, and in this cup right here I have six tablespoons of a 5-5-5 organic fertilizer and three tablespoons of bone meal. Now some people don't like fertilizing their bare root fruit trees, but organic fertilizers like this take months to break down, so that's why it's okay to place the fertilizers on the roots like that. That'll take weeks if not a couple of months to break down, and it'll give some nutrients in that planting hole for when this tree wakes up from dormancy. I'm going to reserve about a third of the fertilizer for a top dressing. And now it is very important to compress the soil around the roots. You cannot have air pockets in the soil, and this is why I like tying up my fruit tree to a stake beforehand. I don't want the tree to settle deeper in the ground. So I'm going to work my foot in a clockwise or counterclockwise pattern until I get full settlement. And now that the fruit tree has been fully tamped down, I'm going to take half of the water and I'm going to pour a couple gallons of water around the fruit tree. And the water is going to help compact the soil around it and force out any air pockets. Now this is just plain water. There is no fertilizer in this water. It would be a waste of soluble fertilizer because the tree has not woken up from dormancy yet. If you added soluble fertilizer right now, you'd basically be wasting your money. Well, it's the middle of November, seven months later. Let's check in and see how our Betty peach tree has grown throughout the year. And here is the peach tree. Despite the fact that it's the middle of November, it still has all of its leaves because we haven't really gotten a frost yet. They're just starting to turn a light red color. In the summer, they're a much deeper green, but hey, we are falling deeply into fall. But what is amazing here is how much the tree has grown. That little dead stick that you saw in the beginning of the video, well, look at it now. It looks great. It's probably about tripled its size already, which is unusual for a bare root fruit tree. Usually they like to spend the first year or two sometimes growing the roots deep into the soil and they don't feel comfortable putting a lot of energy into upward growth. The fact that it's already sending upward growth says to me that this was a very healthy tree with an advanced root system beyond what you usually get from most nurseries. So that is a good thing. Another cool feature is the progress of the espalier form throughout the season. Now over the course of the year, as strategic branches that were budding out in the right direction grew, I grabbed them at an early age and I tied them onto these various cables that are growing. Those are going to provide the support for the foundational branches. And I've gotten to the point where I was able to create the lowest cordon down here and the middle cordon. Then over the winter, when the tree goes dormant, I will lop off some of these other branches that are protruding out in front and then I will head one of these branches and I haven't decided which one yet, but one will be the main trunk that will develop the third layer of cordon. So this little dwarf peach tree right here is going to be absolutely fantastic and such a small space. So if you're in a very cold weather zone, maybe zone four, five, six, where you can't really grow tropical things, well you can grow dwarf peaches. Like last fall, I showed you this dwarf bonanza peach. This is one of the smallest peach trees that you can get, but it makes full-size fruit that is exceptionally delicious. This tree is on its second full season and believe it or not, it's not going to get a whole lot taller than this. They only get to be about five to six feet tall and you can prune them even shorter. So something like this would be the perfect foundation planting for a cold climate that has decidedly more brutal winters than I have here in zone eight. I mean, you can grow so much food in a small space if you just put your mind to it. This espalier wall that I'm building right here, well, this tree right here is a three-in-one Asian pear. I grafted a different variety and tied the branches onto each of the individual cables. So every single row of cables is a different Asian pear variety. Next to it is that peach tree that I just showed you and then over here are three different apple trees that are tied off, all different varieties to cross-pollinate. So look, just in this little space right here, I am growing five different fruit trees and then underneath the fruit trees, I'm growing garden sage and then underneath these trees, I have strawberries everywhere and that is going to be living ground cover. So underneath all of my apple and peach trees, I'll be able to pick strawberries. There is so much that you can do in a small space if you put your mind to it. I hope this video truly inspires you to maximize the space in your yard and turn it into a food forest paradise. My yard is barely a quarter acre and I'm sure many of you watching this have even smaller yards than I do but you don't need a lot of space to grow a lot of things. You just have to be smart about it and plan accordingly. Now, I will place a link above and down in the video description to a video that shares some of my favorite things to plant around a house foundation to help you maximize your space. Hopefully, it will get the gears in your head turning and you can replace those useless shrubs that are probably planted around your house with something better. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. If you're curious about any of the products that I use in real life to take care of my garden and my fruit trees, they are all linked in my Amazon storefront. So expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link and you'll see everything I use in real life. While you're down there, you can also check out my spread shop for custom merch if you want to support my channel. Again, if you're looking for a great place to buy fruit trees, consider looking at Rain Tree Nursery, especially now while their selection is overflowing. Thank you all so much for watching this video and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Smithers, release the hounds. Oh, there's the hound. What do you want, buddy? What do you want? Oh, you can't. You can't. What do you want, buddy? He can't find the button. Get it. Oh, he missed. You missed. I know what you want. Close enough. Let's go get his best boy walking attire. Let's go for our walk. Dale is all set for action. He is ready to go. Look at that tail wagging. All right, buddy. You've been a good boy all day. It's time for your reward.