I planted a food forest garden 13 years ago, here it is today.

What's going on growers? It's James Pigione coming to you live from Jersey. Today I'm going to take you along for a full tour of my 13 year old food forest. This isn't just a garden, it's a living ecosystem. Let's go! 13 years ago this area was all grass, just a normal backyard. Check out what it looks like now. An abundant, productive food forest with some massive trees. Let's go through it, grab some harvests and just enjoy a tour of this beautiful food forest. I gotta get to this apple tree over there. Let's just hop our way through. One thing to the next because these beds are a little overgrown, but I love beds that are overgrown. That means we got a lot of food growing. Right here, pan up a little bit, is the Williams Pride apple. This is my earliest ripening apple tree. I grow varieties that ripen early, mid and late to keep that harvest always coming. This apple over here looks pretty decent. It is late July and we're already getting harvests from this apple. That's why I love it so much. We'll twist it off, grab an apple, you'll love to see it. Organic, homegrown apples in July. I mean, absolutely incredible. Swing over here. Let's check out these beds and this beautiful pepper hidden underneath this squash. Really nice. So peppers actually in the heat of summer like growing in the shade of other plants because once the temperatures get above like 90-95 degrees, the pepper flowers will fall off. But if you've got them shaded in an annual like this squash right here, not only can you get a double yield, but you can get a higher production on your peppers and that's what it's all about. I'm just going to be laying some stuff around as I'm harvesting them and I bet the chipmunks will probably come back and steal everything. So hop over here. We've got just so many things growing. Stuff I don't even notice like, I mean, we've got onions here. Red onion. Could be a little bigger, but still looking good. We've got squash. Beautiful ones. Check this squash out. You'll love to see it. Nice looking squash. Let me harvest this guy. Perfect size. I don't want it to get much bigger than this, but this is going to be good eating. Check out in there. We've got some green beans, my dragon tongue beans. That's my favorite variety of all loaded with beans. I mean, there's so much production. Check these out right here. Look at the beauty on these things. I love it so much. And what you guys got to see next is the tomatoes. If you're in Jersey, like I am, you got to have good tomatoes because in New Jersey, that's one of the things we're known for. Yeah. Some people will call us the garden state, but in reality, we should probably be the tomato state because we've got some fantastic tomatoes. Look at this section. We've got 20 varieties of tomatoes growing in 20 square feet. I love this style of growing because one of the really cool things about tomatoes is that there's like over like 10,000 varieties. So when we grow like this and we grow them super dense, we can try so many different varieties of tomatoes. We're not stuck with just like one variety. And when you grow them in trellises, just like I am right now, you're getting a lower yield per plant, but you'll get a higher yield per for the square footage you have because we're growing vertical. You pan up, there's just more and more tomatoes growing on this thing. Let me show you one of the tomatoes in the back over here real quick. This one is so productive. Look at the sets. I think this is the, this is the, this is the, uh, the bing. Look at that. That's beautiful. Truss after truss, after truss, after truss. It has been a tough year for some of the varieties of tomatoes though, because it's been so humid and so hot and we've had a lot of rain. As a result, some of our tomatoes have had some blight issues. But one of the great things about growing different varieties is that you, we grow some varieties that are resistant to things like blight, which is convenient because then we don't really have to worry about the issue. So when you grow a bunch of different varieties, there's almost like a level of insurance when it comes to your harvest. Because when you grow some that are resistant to blight, some that are resistant to fusarium wilt, then you're almost always going to get a variety that really excels. Like this one right here. This is the cherry bomb tomato. It has much less disease problems than my other tomatoes because this one, it has what they call bomb proof disease resistance to blight. So it performs fantastic. It's got some beautiful tomatoes on it. Oops. And boy, do these things taste good. Check out this thing right next to me. So it's pretty funny. This bed, I, uh, I had some tomatoes in, in little pots here and then I left them for too long. They rooted into the ground and now this whole thing is just taken over with tomatoes. It was an accident, but it's all good. I do have a variety like the, um, mountain magic in here, which is disease resistant. So we're still getting some tomatoes just from this little section. Pretty cool. And the next to me down here, this is a, an experiment that I'm running. You guys will never guess this experiment. I'm incredibly excited to share it with you. And I've mentioned it before, but this might be one of my coolest, most interesting experiments that I've ever run. And it won't be long until we, uh, bring you along for just how it went. Come over here. This pear tree is one of my most productive pear trees in the whole garden. This thing kicks out so much fruit. Last year, I got some incredible harvests from this and the pears taste fantastic. It's an Asian variety and boy, is it good. Right behind me too, we're in Jersey. So we got to go with the Jersey plum. That's what this one is right here. I think I might still have a few plums back here. Notice some over here. So still a few plums. So grab like this one up here. We spray this one with this around, and then we're able to get some fruit because, uh, the plum curculio leave it alone. So let me get a bite of this one and just see how it tastes. Juicing on me a little bit. So sweet. So delicious. It's a mini plum, but it's also kind of feels like a giant cherry regardless. It's so dang good. Let's swing over here. So we've got our blueberries and stuff. One of the cool things about a growing a garden like this is that I don't really do any watering on my perennials. The only perennials I really give any water are the strawberries when they're fruiting and the blueberries. When it comes to the fruit trees, I don't really have to water them. And that's because of the system we set up right down below us. It's all about building a good foundation. These wood chips build an incredible foundation for fruit trees because they can really retain the moisture. And when you've been putting wood chips in for years and years like I have, you can see, look how we go deeper. We're not even to where the actual soil was. The original soil. Deeper, deeper. This is all years of built up wood chips. This creates a perfect environment for fruit trees, brings in the mycorrhizal fungi, which helps build the association. Look at that. Deeper and deeper. We still have that color from wood chips. This is how you turn crappy soil into good soil without any extra work. Just let nature do it for you. Beautiful. So that's why I really don't water my fruit trees. I only water them about the first two years I planted them. Then they tap into the water table. They tap into the mycorrhizal fungi. We just let them do their thing. Another thing behind me, another event where I accidentally planted the wrong thing. I thought this was like a zucchino rampicante, I mean a summer squash, but it's actually a winter squash. You can see the butternuts back there. So it's sort of taken over this whole section, but it's all good. We'll let it go because we know we're going to get a big harvest from it. I've got these butternut squashes literally everywhere. If you have problem growing squash, whether it's summer or winter, the winter squashes like the butternut are always going to be better with the vine borers because the winter squashes, they're a different kind of squash than the summer squash. They have much thicker stems and the squash vine borers don't like going after them as much. So this plant just absolutely crushes it. Come over here. We've got carrots down here we harvested just the other day. A few from, we'll grab another one. Let's just see what we got. Let's just see. Not bad. Looks like a nice yellow carrot. Love to see it. When I do these videos, they're some of my videos that I enjoy more than any other. I have so much fun with them, but it's a little different now without Tuck because I would usually grab this. He would show up from, you know, who knows where. He would just know that I grabbed the carrot. He'd show up, I'd snap it, he'd grab some bites of the carrot. So it was always a lot more fun running around the garden with him, but it's a blast to just be in the food forest and to share the growth with you, especially if you've been here for a while. If you have or haven't, hit that subscribe button so you can follow along for not only the progress on this one, you know, two years later when it's 15 years, 16 years, 17 years, but also we've got that new 10 acre property. We're setting that up. We're going bigger. We're investing everything into it and you gotta follow along because that place is going to go from zero to I guess hero pretty much. Let's go this way. Let's check out what we got back here. Over here is a pallet bed. This is one that I built just out of one small pallet. It's got a huge squash in it. The squash took over the bed, but the idea is that you don't need a lot of space to grow a lot of food and you don't need a lot of money. And we got, we built this bed for free and we're getting a lot of food from it. You love to see some beautiful zucchini just like that. Swing over here. This bed we're starting to set up for a next round. You can see our next round of squash are right here and you can probably hear a plane above. We're right by the shore, right by the beach. So they love flying up some of their banners. We won't, we won't show it too much because we're not going to give them the advertising, but you know, there's always something flying above over here where we're at. And then the cucumbers, new round of cucumbers looking good. New round of squash, beets in the back, but we've also got that other round of beets. Look at these, look how beautiful these are growing. We'll grab one of these. These are the orange beets and I've cut into one and they look so dang beautiful. Look at that big, gorgeous harvest of beets. We love to see it. Swing back over to that keyhole bed. Let's check that baby out. It's a keyhole bed, but you probably can't even see it because things are overgrown so much. In here we've got some squash that are sneaking in, like some patty pans. Grab that one right there. We've got another one back here. That looks good. We'll grab that one. This bed is just loaded. There's so much stuff in here and it's mostly all of our summer stuff. We'll let this continue to go as we start setting up and getting some of our fall stuff planted. Once the summer stuff really slows down, we'll swing in and get the summer and get the fall stuff in. You notice we've got another pepper right here. I usually grow most of my peppers in containers, but I threw some in beds this year just to fill the spaces and we're just grabbing some harvests from them. Behind me I've got a few more cucumbers. It's been a bit of a rough year for cucumbers, but we're still getting some nice harvests. We'll grab a few of these and another one here. You'll love to see it and there's even more beets over here. These are the white beets. We'll let those go a little longer, but yeah, I mean this food forest looks insane. The focus on this food forest is more towards annuals. As we move into the other food forest, you'll notice things are a little bit different and that's why, I mean there's a purpose for it. There's a reason we designed it that way. Let's move over to the older food forest and before we get into it, check this out right here. Look at the growth on the squash. It's incredible. This is the white scallop squash. Check out the peppers right here. They're doing well. The basil here and then on the backside we've got this tomato growing out the side doing really well. I mean yeah, that's nice, but take a step back and notice this is the raised bed that we built for like less than two dollars. So, going back to what I said before, you don't need a lot of money to grow some of your own food and get a high level of production. One small bed letting stuff drape off the sides and look at all this food. I think it's just incredible. Let me bring you back to this corner over here. We've got some cucumbers that are doing well. If you come through here along this fence line, check out all these healthy looking cubes. Look at this guy. This is a perfect shaped one. Look at these ones over here. Looking really, really nice. I've even got some beauties on the backside like this one. Check it. That is the ideal looking cucumber. Grab a harvest of that. If we snapped this open and took a bite of it, it'd be so refreshing and so juicy because cucumbers are 95% water and they'll really, that's why they're like the best cooling snack in the heat of summer. Come back here. We've got some more cucumbers, but I think we've seen enough of that. Just take a step back actually a little bit and check this out right here. Here's another Mountain Magic tomato. Look at the color and the health of it. Look how nice the tomatoes look. It's got good disease resistance. It's a delicious tomato. Overall, it's one of my all-time favorites. You guys got to get this one in the garden if you've never grown it. The Mountain Magic. Also, right now is the perfect time because these tomatoes are in a high level of production. They're going to keep producing because this is an indeterminate variety. It will continue to produce flowers and fruit up until a frost. We still have 80 days left, at least basically, to be growing this tomato. We want to make sure we're keeping it well fed so it can keep us well fed. Simple. For that, it's a great time to do a top dressing of some all-purpose fertilizer. Obviously, I like the JP Secret stuff because it's my own fertilizer and it's the one that gives me these levels of production. Just look at the stuff in here. It's growing amazingly and it's all organic. Check out this Liberty apple tree. This is the most disease-resistant apple tree on the planet. That's what people call it. If you have problems growing apples, I suggest getting the Liberty in. When it comes to fruit trees, it's one of the most cliche sayings ever. People say it all the time, but the best time to plant a fruit tree is seven years ago. The second best time is today. This video is to encourage you to get stuff planted. You don't have to plant a food forest all at once, but one tree at a time, then add another one, then a bush, and everything accumulates. You're either accumulating value or you're accumulating debt or loss or regret. I say we accumulate value. It's the way to go. Check this out right here. We've got an apple tree, but notice hanging from it. Look at this Zucchino rampicante. This is insane. Look at this thing. The thing's got to be like four feet long. It's hilarious looking. This is another one of those squash. It's in the same family as the winter squash, so it has that hard stem. The squash vine borers hate it, but you can eat it as a summer squash. I consider it to be one of the most versatile squash there are out there. If you want summer squash, but you have a problem getting it because the vine borers just decimate your plants, try this one. Try the Zucchino rampicante. It might make all the difference for you. Let's swing over to the bago trellis because we've got some beautiful grapes up here. I mean, look at some of these sets. Look at over here. Look how gorgeous that is. The grapes are getting big. They look beautiful. Check out some of them up here. There's so many of them growing in this trellis. Check out right here. There was a bird's nest here, which is cool. We always have robins that are raising families in here, but it's kind of funny. The robins, they come here with the parents. They lay their eggs. They hatch their new young, but then they end up coming back and stealing some of our grapes. It's pretty funny, but when you have a garden like this, it's tough to keep things out because not only is it a food forest, not only is it a paradise for people, but it's a paradise for all living things. It's a living, breathing ecosystem. It's moving. It's not static. It's just an incredible thing to be a part of. Check out down here. We've got our pole beans growing this next round. They're looking beautiful. They're going to grow up all over this trellis and just fill this space in, and we're going to get food from it. Swing to your right. There's a few things that have happened over the years. One of them, as you come in here, is the hazelnut trees and some of the perennials in here have gotten massive. They're so big. You'd be thinking that's not a good thing, but actually it has always been part of the design. This garden is on the north side, so if we grow tall things, they won't shade that other garden out. The other garden over there has some perennials on the edges, but we left more of the center to grow a lot of annuals. This area has a lot of big perennials, but that's always been the design because the perennials take much less work, and the majority of the work for perennials is during the winter. Let's come over here, and the majority of the work for the annuals is in the summer, so it's like the perennials, we do some work in the winter, and they pay off for us in the summer. The annuals, we do some work in the spring and pay off in the summer too, but regardless, we're like working on the two different annuals and perennials at different times of the year. Right here, we've got a beautiful pear tree, the chajuro. This one is always so productive. It's got some pears on it. They'll be ready later, probably like October, November, and then back here, we've got the persimmon tree. This one is so gorgeous. It's absolutely massive. This is the Nikita's Gift. It's a hybrid of both the American persimmon and the Asian one, so it's an incredible variety. I love this persimmon tree, and I love that it's taking over. This other hazelnut over here has gotten large too. It was completely loaded with hazelnuts, but the chipmunks and the squirrels have done a number on it, so I don't think we're gonna get that many this year. Regardless, the tree looks beautiful. Fig tree doing really nice too, has gotten absolutely huge, and I mean, you gotta have figs. They look just gorgeous. Let me bring you over to a section in the back. Look how big the prigione apple has gotten, and it's loaded with fruit. I planted this thing from seed when I first started the garden like 13 years ago, and it's just so cool to see a tree that you planted from seed and then hang out in the shade of it and grab some delicious fruit from it. Let me bring you over to some stuff over in this bed. We're transitioning some of the beds from summer over to fall, so we've pulled a few of the things out so we can get our brassicas and some of our cold hardy stuff and fall things in. We still have some young things like some squash growing here because we still have time to get a harvest, and we also have some squash over here, and then when it comes to my annuals and watering in these beds, I've got the veggo irrigation kit set up, so I don't really have to do that much work. This way, there's not a lot of watering that needs to be done, like, by hand. It's, uh, you know, the mulch takes care of it, and so does the watering system. You'll notice this cherry tree has lost a lot of leaves. It always happens around this time of year. I believe it's because of a blight issue, but also there's an underlying issue of the garden symphyllum being in the ground, and I think they stressed the tree out just a little bit. Come over here, though. Check this out. The size of this sunflower. It just opened yesterday. I mean, it's got to be well over 10 feet tall. I never even planted this. It came up from seed as a volunteer, an absolute gift from nature and the garden. There's nothing like beautiful flowers coming up, volunteers. Gorgeous. Look down here. Uh, well, first, actually, look to the left because we've got some more apples. Here's another apple tree, a young one, four years old, I think, and still producing, maybe five. So, you guys got to get trees in now so they can give fruit to you soon. Back here, we planted a bunch of squash to sort of take over this back area, and that's exactly what's happening. Mixed in there's echinaceas. You might even miss some of these. Like, look at this. This is a healthy, healthy blueberry right here. I got to take the morning glory out, but this beautiful blueberry. Another apple tree right here that's going to be, is a honeycrisp. I think this one's going to have a lot of fruit next year, so I'm excited for it. There's a lot of stuff growing back here. Overall, the food forest is doing incredible. We've got some blackberries in the back. There's just so much food, and things are growing so prolifically, it's literally hard to keep up. That's today's video, growers. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. These are probably my favorite videos to make, just running around seemingly like, like an idiot, pointing this out, pointing that out, but the garden just gets me so excited. This is my true passion, and there's not much in life that's brought me more joy than building this food forest, growing it, and then being a part of nature. Truly feeling like that you're actually tapped in. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, share it with your friends. Get engaged down in the comments, because it helps the channel significantly. I also wanted to send a thank you to one of our new channel members, Andrea Wilson. Thanks for being a part of Team Grow. Thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here. I also want to mention, check out the merch over at teamgrow.us. We've got some awesome new designs. I absolutely love them, and I love repping them to just, you know, try to share that message of building and growing a better future together, and also just grow some of your own food. It's not that hard. It's a lot of fun, and there's just so much joys in it, like sitting in the shade of the tree that I'm in right now. This is a cherry tree. It was loaded with yellow cherries earlier in the year, and now we're just hanging out in the shade of it. It's not too hot of a day, but it's definitely humid out here. I also wanted to say to check out the community over at teamgrow.us. There's well over 3,000 of us on there that are coming together, that are sharing what we learned, that are helping one another out to just, you know, reach that ultimate goal of growing a better future together. Overall, this video was a blast. Give me a quick pan of the garden just real quick to show you guys what it looks like, and also spam some hearts down low if you miss the young King Tuck. We miss him every day, but we're also thankful and grateful that he was one of the big inspirations, one of the big drivers, and just, he was so intricate in building this food forest, so we come out here every day and thank him. We back at you with another one real soon. We out!