GARDEN TOUR： How I Use Every Part of My Yard and Garden)

Today I'd like to give you a tour of my backyard garden. Not just the beds but the whole space so you can get an idea how things are laid out. I recently had some people here for a painting in the garden event. It was so fun but the comment I kept hearing was it's different in person than it is on camera. It's really nice to see how everything's laid out and it makes me feel like I could do this too. And that's what I want to show you today that you don't need a huge yard to grow fruit vegetables and flowers. You can absolutely do this in your space. Okay come on back. Let's walk through the garden section by section and I'll show you how I use each space and how the sun moves through the space. So these are the main garden beds that you normally see and a lot of this area gets great sunlight. There's a lot of sun that comes through here. This area over here gets afternoon shade naturally in the summer which is great. I put up shade cloth over here to give it some afternoon shade as well. When we expanded into this part of the yard I added three beds. I replaced them last year with metal beds but these were the three initial areas that I gardened in. This used to be a sandbox and then I slowly took over the rest of the sandbox by adding more beds. So I added these other beds in here and this is a great area. It gets great morning sun and a lot of afternoon shade naturally. Really prime area to garden in during the summer months. This is a north facing wall so I'm always surprised how little sun this area gets in the winter. I can come out in the middle of the day and parts of this are still shaded. So crops in this area in the winter grow a lot more slowly. Vines like honeysuckle and star jasmine are really happy along this north facing wall. This grouping of flowers here grew a lot more slowly than the flowers in the other beds. These sweet peas are just starting to bloom where the other ones have been blooming for quite a while and they're finishing up. This area is just getting going and they will bloom a lot longer into spring because of all the shade they receive. This is also the coldest spot in my yard which makes it perfect for my peach tree so we can get enough chill hours and have delicious fruit. But that also means it's a bad place for tomatoes. All the tomatoes I had planted in here froze last winter when we had just a couple of frost events because the cold really settles into this area. You can probably hear the chickens. I've loved having them in the garden. It makes it feel so much more alive. So the coop right here it gets some afternoon shade from this peach tree and also when I put up the shade cloth in this area that helps to shade the chickens a little bit. They're kind of tucked back in here. Got their little coop and then their run. Recently added a bunch more chickens so we're up to 10. Hoping we get up to 10 eggs a day because I've got a teenage son who eats a lot of eggs so I don't want to buy him at the grocery store. I have a few passion fruit vines tucked in against that wall. It does get some late afternoon sun so they have to be able to handle some sun. This nicotiana you can see here it's totally taken over. I had no idea how big these plants get. They're huge. They're beautiful. They smell amazing especially at night. Can't believe it. But there's actually a few, I think two dwarf fruit trees under here that are completely being you know swallowed up by this nicotiana. There's a Mexican orchid vine back behind there as well. For right now they're very happy against this western wall. They got plenty of sunlight this winter. Continuing along this western wall so it gets morning shade and afternoon sun. This area can definitely heat up so I've got grapevines growing. Here are the sweet peas that have been blooming for a long time starting to finish up not keeping up with the harvesting here and other heat loving vines that grow well with all of that sunlight. I like having the opportunity for in ground areas. They're different than our raised beds so it gives me a chance to kind of see how the soil develops. Added a lot of wood chips through the years to these areas. It's built up the soil. I have a drip line that goes through here that will water some of the annuals and then some individual drip lines to some of the trees. I have vines planted against these walls and then dwarf or ultra dwarf fruit trees growing in these beds. So if they're not dwarfed naturally I'm definitely going to keep them pruned because I still want to keep them a manageable size not have them take over. But I want to have fruit trees growing along here that I'm able to harvest fruit from. This is our Barbados cherry and then we've got guava grape there that's waking up. Nice to see that. And goji berries here. Guava. More grapes here. This is a plum just getting going. So this is again a dwarf plum right here. Got a fig there and then an apple and a guava that are swallowed up. Can't really see those right now. But lots of small fruit trees growing along here. After taking over the sandbox I took over the rest of this part of the yard. We took out all of the grass and added these beds. I've loved this part of the garden. The arch trellises are a favorite. I've loved growing up and over them. But it definitely needs afternoon shade. It doesn't get it naturally. So we installed these poles. There's four around the garden. That gives me some relief from the afternoon sun here in this area. And then I usually plant some sunflowers. Branching sunflowers along this side to also give some relief from that western sun. As that sun goes down over here that blocks some of that sunlight and then we've got the shade up above here. When I talk about directions like northern, western, I'm talking about the exposure that that area receives. For example this north facing wall is on the south side of my property. And this western exposure wall is on the east side of my property. You can see the sun rising up here in the east. So when you're mapping out your own garden it's crucial to pay attention to those exposures. A western exposure that gets afternoon sun is a lot different than a northern exposure that gets minimal sun. That exposure helps determine what you plant and what will grow well in those areas. So no matter how much space I have I always seem to run out of room. So I love adding grow bags if I need them throughout the yard. But it's also helpful for me to keep gardening in containers, keep gardening in grow bags because it is more challenging. I want to know how it works and the challenges that people are facing when they're gardening in a little bit different conditions, not the ideal raised bed. I've loved gardening in these beds. It's fun to think back to all of the things that have grown up these trellises through the years. I felt like hundreds of luffas hanging through these. But these trellises have been such a fun addition to the garden. I love walking through them, having different things grow up them, and planning what I'm going to have this season growing up these trellises. Roses have been such a fun addition to the garden. These are in their second year. This is a perfect spot for roses. They get that nice morning sun, then some afternoon shade. They're very happy and I'm happy to see all of the blooms. They're so pretty this year. I'll show you a couple things I have growing back in here. Got lots of warm season crops hopefully ready to climb up and take over these trellises. Asparagus that needs picked actually. Need to get on that through here. Blackberries. Although this is a big space and I have a lot of room and I've tried to maximize the room by adding lots of beds and things, not everyone has a big garden. So I'm experimenting with some small space gardening ideas for people who garden on patios or balconies. What can work here in the heat and what are some of the best ways to do that? So I've recently added an elevated gardening bed which is a good option for a lot of people if they don't want to bend over or if they have limited space. So I'm practicing with this. I'm giving this good exposure. It has morning sunlight, afternoon shade. I'm going to see how it does. Same thing with these green stock gardens. Small footprint for a lot of plants. These can be a really good option if you just have a small growing area. If you just get a little bit of sunlight because you can rotate it around to maximize the sunlight that you get. So I'm experimenting with some of these things even though I have a large garden and can grow lots of things. It's always nice to see how things grow in these small spaces and help people maximize the space that they do have. So now you've seen my main garden but that isn't where I started gardening. I have five kids who used most of this yard as they were growing up. So when I wanted to garden I got the side yard. Let me show you how it started. So kind of tucked back in here is my first garden area. The initial beds are gone. Started those back in 2008. They were back here. Started with square foot gardening. Went to Home Depot. Cut the wood and it was very fun. Like it was a great garden and eventually obviously kept expanding and expanding. Because of the location this side yard garden gets less sunlight. It really is shaded by the house next to me. By my house. So we're only getting you know a few hours depending on the time of year of sun. It's enough for things to grow but things definitely grow more slowly over here. Because this area doesn't have ideal sunlight for growing it's a perfect spot for things like my workstation where I do a lot of potting up, putting things together. You can see the labels here are ready for my son to spray paint over so I can reuse them. That's one of his Saturday jobs. We've got my rain tank here which is full. Look at that. That means it's full. Yay. I'm kind of hoarding it a little bit. I need to start using it. There's a pump that connects it to the sprinkler system but I love seeing it full so I'll start using it. I also have compost in here. Extra leaves that didn't fit in the compost are bagged up. These are all full so I need to get on it. I'm a little nervous to open this. I peeked open yesterday and there was a rat in there so we're not going to open the compost bins today. I'll take care of that later. So things are definitely heating up. The nasturtiums are not loving life quite as much but the birds are loving my strawberry patch. Because this area doesn't get as much sunlight I don't come over here as much and it doesn't get as much attention and the birds have really just made a mess of this strawberry patch. It's really sad to see. I've not given it the attention that it deserves. I've got other things growing. Warm season crops that I've planted all through here. This is a great area for herbs as well. It doesn't get as much sunlight so this is my kind of perpetual herb garden where herbs will grow really well. And this other garden we planted in a recent video doing pretty good. I've got one squash here that looks great. Another squash planted the exact same time. It doesn't look great. So you never know. I'm so surprised. I'm looking at this thinking what's going on. So another reason sometimes to plant more than one because I'm not sure. Oh actually I think I may have figured a little bit of it out. This squash plant is right next to the inbed vermicomposting bin so that might have something to do with why it's growing so well. Mystery may have been solved on that one. So we've got an eastern facing wall which is a great place. It gets morning sunlight but unfortunately because the house is there it also gets a lot of shade. So we're not getting as much sunlight as would be ideal. But I found things that grow here. This is a pink trumpet vine that's growing pretty well. You definitely have to keep an eye on some of these vines. Duranta erecta that I just cut back. This kind of fills in. It's really pretty purple flowers and it's it's coming back right through here and it's very happy here. Lemongrass just cut this back too and then a Duranta erecta right here and then another pink trumpet vine. So this area it gets nice and full. I love seeing all the greenery out my kitchen window looking out here and just enjoying seeing the wildlife and really enjoying having this kind of all green and filled in. I've experimented with growing more edible annuals and things here but they just haven't grown as well. So I've settled into having some perennials here that come back add greenery and are really a low maintenance good option for this area of the yard. So even within this one yard here in Mesa there's lots of different challenges and different things I've had to kind of figure out. I've killed a lot of plants along the way to figure out what grows well where and how to maximize each location and make the most of it and create that microclimate where things are going to grow well and make it easier on me so that I can have a beautiful garden with as little work as possible. So once I was able to get more space and move over here into this larger area I was shocked how quickly things grew. That extra sunlight made a huge difference to my garden. So as you're gardening your area might have different challenges. Don't get discouraged but learn. Figure out what works best in your space and make the most of your advantages and try to mitigate the challenges. Figure out what grows well. Try different things. You're going to kill a lot of plants along the way but as you do that you're going to grow and get more experience and by doing it not just learning about it and talking about it you will learn more than you ever could. So how big is my garden? Well our lot is between a third and half an acre and on that you can see we're a family with a house with basketball a pool you know there's other things going but my garden area is about 40 by 50 this area in here and my side yard garden is about nine feet by about 36 feet so that gives me quite a bit of square footage to work with. There's also quite a bit in the front yard and that's where I grow a lot of my fruit trees. I'd love to show you that sometime. But whether you have more space than I do or less it's all about finding ways to maximize your space and figuring out what grows well in your area. As you do that you'll have a successful garden. Thank you so much for joining me on this tour. Okay so really it will be different what you plant. Thank you. I was like the character. Do you want to walk under the trellises? Oh I know I didn't finish it though but but whether what did we say? All right.