I Spent 5 Years Building a Backyard to Feed My Family

So five years ago this yard was nothing more than a big patch of grass and today it is a thriving garden and ecosystem that produces thousands of pounds of fresh food a year. But it certainly didn't start out that way and over the last five years I've made just about every gardening mistake imaginable and I've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. So today I'm sharing with you 10 lessons I wish I knew when I started gardening that hopefully can save you some headaches and All right, so the first lesson that just completely changed how I garden is realizing that gardening is not a one-season event. So my first garden ever was on a rooftop in Brooklyn and I did pretty much what every beginner gardener does. May rolls around, it starts getting nice out, I went to the nursery, bought some tomatoes, peppers, basil, zucchini, planted everything in my garden and I let those plants run their course and that was pretty much my And this is how most big nurseries are set up, where their seedlings are at their optimal stage for planting right in the middle of spring when it's super nice out. And it trains most gardeners to think of gardening as just this summer thing you do. When I was growing up I always heard that Mother's Day, which is right around mid-May, was sort of the definitive date you were allowed to plant in the ground. Like it was some type of garden law. And that is definitely a good timeline when you're talking about those warm weather summer crops. But if you choose to plant any cooler weather crops, like your spinach, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, onions, all of those veggies realistically can go in the ground right after your last frost, which in reality is months before people start planting their first veggies in the ground. And honestly the best way to get in tune with this is just to start going to farmer's markets. Because farmers are certainly going to know when things grow well and taste the best. So just see when things are coming in season and you'll get an idea in your garden when to plant these things out. That's certainly how I learned years before I had a serious garden like this. And honestly, just this one simple mindset shift of taking advantage of multiple seasons of growing food probably doubled the amount of food I grow every single year. But the question is, how do you actually put that into action? Which brings me into lesson number two, which is interplanting crops. Now you might be thinking to yourself, if I fill my beds up with all of these different spring crops, where am I going to have space for those summer crops like the tomatoes and the peppers and the eggplant? And that's exactly where the technique of interplanting crops comes into play. And it took me years to really figure out how to incorporate this technique into my gardening. So right now, all the vegetables you see in here were planted at the end of winter or early spring, and we've been harvesting some already and the rest of them will be harvested within the next few weeks. But the problem is they're taking up pretty much all of the space in this garden right here. And if I were to wait to harvest all of this stuff to plant new seeds, I would be way behind on those summer crops. But if we take a little closer look, it's going to reveal a secret weapon in this garden. So all of these snap peas are close to running their course, still delicious, but we'll pull them soon. And what's already established, ready to go, tomatillos lining the entire bottom of this bed. Or over here, we've already been removing some snap peas. We've got cucumbers already ready to go, interplanted with these snap peas. Over here, we've got onions that are going to be about a month till harvest. Right in between, interplanted, eggplant, all lining this bed. Garlic over here, we're going to harvest that next week. What's in between, already established, peppers, baby. In this garlic patch, I've got some tobacco, already established, ready to go, more peppers. We've got this beautiful broccoli heading up. We'll harvest that over the next month. And right behind it, interplanted our beautiful beans, already putting out beans. So as those spring crops were getting bigger and closer to harvest, we were already direct sowing seeds under those plants and interplanting seedlings. That way, they could be nice and established and well on their way by the time we harvest everything else. And I've actually found that they establish even better this way because the spring crops are providing a little bit of shade, protecting them from that intense sun. Plus, you're never leaving bare soil exposed, which is much closer to how nature works. Now, if you missed that interplanting window, that's totally fine. The next best thing is just succession planting. Right when you harvest these spring crops, you've got a nice established seeding ready to go in the ground, giving you at least a few weeks of a headstart. Now, maybe you're watching this video and you're thinking to yourself, Mike, you're telling me to plant three different seasons of plants. Isn't that a ton more work? Well, not necessarily if you choose the right crops to plant, which brings me into lesson number three. Always grow low effort, high reward crops, because no matter what level of gardener you are, nature will constantly humble your ass. So we want to at least make sure we have some more guaranteed crops in the garden to increase our chances of success. Now, exactly what those low effort, high reward crops are going to change for everyone, depending on their climate and their growing conditions. For me, I'm surrounded by one of them, which is onions. The other crop that I have in that bed is garlic. With both of these plants, I get almost no pest issues, no animal damage, and very little disease pressure. So I pretty much have zero maintenance at all. All I have to worry about is having some healthy soil. I plant them and I get to enjoy the bounty in the harvest, which I know may trigger some people because I've seen you in the comments who struggle with both of those plants. And that's exactly why you need to experiment during those first few years and figure out what grows best in your own garden. For us, we continue to increase the amount of garlic and onions we grow every single year, because not only are they incredibly delicious, but you can harvest them at different stages throughout the growing season. And honestly, they just sit there, they grow, they look nice, which gives me a little bit more time to focus my energy on vegetables that are more needy and need a little bit more attention. And of course, all of these onions and garlic are interplanted with different summer crops. So once we harvest them, those warmer crops are established and ready to go. Now, unfortunately, not all crops are low effort. I grow plenty of things that different bugs and animals absolutely love and destroy. Which brings me into lesson number four, organic pest control. And this was something I was terrible at when I first started my garden. My plants would get absolutely destroyed and it was very upsetting. But over the years, through all of those failures, you slowly figure things out and you learn what each crop needs to stay protected and healthy. And the first line of defense and the best line of defense by far is what you see right here, insect netting. There is nothing better than insect netting. It takes a little bit of effort to put up, but we use it everywhere. Outside of the lower effort crops that I just mentioned that don't get the bug pressure, we pretty much cover every single plant while it's still young and establishing, because this is when it's most vulnerable and different insects and animals can completely take it out and ruin your entire crop. We use these simple hoops that you can buy on Amazon or any garden store. And we pop over these long rows of insect netting that cover the entire bed and just use rocks to kind of keep everything in place. It's a super simple setup, but it's made probably the biggest difference in producing more food in this garden. So all of these brassicas that would normally get destroyed by cabbage, moss or rabbits, they're going to get covered while they're young. And then once they're big and healthy, we can remove the netting. This year, we also covered our sweet peas to protect the young shoots from birds and squirrels. And once they become big, strong, healthy plants, the netting can get removed and you can pick freely. We also try to protect all of our squash while it's growing nice and strong. So that squash vine borer can't get into that young, tender plant and lay its eggs. And we'll remove the covers so the flowers on the squash can be pollinated. Now we also use a handful of organic sprays when we need them. And I'm not going to get into all the details on this, but the learning curve is pretty simple. You notice a pest, you take a picture and identify it. You look up the best organic treatment and most of them work really well. It's just a matter of staying on top of it. And over time you build the knowledge and this pest protection leads to much healthier plants for much better and bigger harvest. Speaking of pests, you see just like hundreds of these cabbage moth around. So now that all these brassicas are way too big for that bug netting, we'll go around and we'll spray these plants with the organic BT, which is going to protect them from laying eggs and getting worms in your cabbage. But I want to talk about lesson five, which is the reason we have these absolutely beautiful rows of brassicas lining these beds. And that's because we choose proven varieties. And as a beginner gardener, it's almost impossible not to get a little overzealous flipping through those seed catalogs or walking through your local nursery. And you just see all these cool varieties and you think, well, I want to grow that. And that's definitely part of the fun and it's good to experiment early on. But if you really want to grow a lot of food and maximize your success, you want to tune in and focus on those proven varieties that you know grow well in your garden. For instance, these beautiful cone-shaped cabbage. Look at this thing. Super dense, nice cabbage right here. We planted this variety one year and it did extremely well, which is why we have an entire row of it. And when it comes to something like cabbage, different varieties are not going to taste that much different, which is why this year we're only growing two varieties that we know grow well in this garden. And the same goes for carrots. We used to plant all these different colors of carrots, but we didn't have that much success. Now we plant one or two varieties and we are crushing the carrot game. The same goes for onions and beets and broccoli. These are vegetables that don't have that much variance in flavor. So I'm fine just picking the best variety that grows well for me. Now there are exceptions to this when it comes to say tomatoes or peppers. I can't resist. I plant a ton of different varieties, but I know both of those crops do well for me. And there's just so much variety and color and shape and flavor that I can't resist. So you want to think of your garden as this ongoing experiment. Every season you're gathering data, you're keeping varieties that thrive, replacing ones that don't. And before long, your entire garden will be filled with plants that you already know are going to succeed. All right, so we're moving away from the vegetables to talk about my absolute favorite thing to grow. Also the most frustrating thing you can grow, which are fruit trees. But this next lesson could save you a lot of frustration. So I planted my first fruit tree about six years ago, and I now probably have over a hundred different fruit trees growing here. And let me tell you, I wasted years of my life on a few of them because I didn't know about this lesson, which is the plant disease resistant varieties. Take this honey crisp tree right here. Everyone knows honey crisp apples are delicious. One of the most popular apples nowadays, but most people don't know they're an absolute nightmare to grow. This is why you're seeing cosmic crisp explode because farmers are just fed up. These trees are very prone to disease, which means they take a lot of maintenance to stay healthy, so they'll produce fruit. So of course, when I was picking out those early trees, I went with things that I knew tasted good, things that I liked with very little thought on actually how they would perform in my environment. But a much better move is to plant cultivars that are naturally disease resistant, which is very easy to look up online. Take for instance, this dwarf Williams pride apple that I planted just last fall. I'm currently training it to espalier on this trellis. And this thing is naturally resistant to apple cedar rust and fire blight, which we get both of those here on Long Island, since it's super wet and humid. I planted this tree last fall. It looks beautiful. It already has apples on it compared to that honey crisp tree, which I constantly have to spray. It still gets disease and I haven't had fricking apples on it in five years. So the moral of the story is, don't just think about the varieties that you know, because there are so many delicious varieties out there that just aren't grown commercially, but they're going to perform so much better in your backyard and it's going to be so much less maintenance. So you can spend your time harvesting the fruit rather than constantly just spraying these trees and hoping for the best. Now, disease is not the only thing you're going to be dealing with when it comes to fruit trees. Insects will mess your fruit trees up, which brings me right into lesson number seven, which is to plant some more pest resistant fruit trees. And I'm standing right in between two fruit trees that are the best example of this. So right here, I have this beautiful espaliered Asian pear, which is producing some nice little fruits here. But if we look at the young tender shoots coming up, this is kind of gross. All of these little eggs are actually aphid eggs that the ants are farming for the sugars that come out of them. They are milking these aphid eggs and it's all over these young shoots. Gross. Now, if we walk over to these persimmon trees, we've got these thick glossy leaves, which are basically insect proof. You can see beautiful persimmons growing all over this tree. Now, a persimmon is not going to be as popular as say an apple or a pear, but they are absolutely delicious. And they're so easy to grow that I've just continued to plant them in different parts of the garden. And the same thing goes for fig trees, which have a natural chemical defense against insects. And because they're so tough and maintenance free, I've continued to plant more figs around my garden. So it's natural to be tempted by the popular varieties that you already know. And I do have those in my garden, but there are a lot of varieties of fruit trees that are naturally resistant to pests. And if you plant more of those, you'll spend a lot less time fighting bugs and a lot more time harvesting fruit. So when I started this garden five years ago, I focused on growing food in very distinct spaces like this. Like I was a farmer or maybe a raised bed, like a standard garden that I was used to. But every single year I've continued to expand and find pockets of the garden that I never thought I would be growing food in. And that brings me to lesson number eight. There always seems to be more room to sneak in growing food. So a few examples right here, this area is shaded by these trees. So I didn't think I'd ever be growing fruit trees, but I started a little pawpaw orchard, which actually loves growing on the outskirts where there is more shade. And these pawpaws are growing super well. Or over here, where there's even more shade, you might not think you can grow food, but if you've watched these videos, you know I grow a ton of mushrooms on these logs, in this new mushroom tent. So much amazing food with minimal effort in a completely shaded area. Or if we cruise around to the side of the greenhouse, I've turned this entire sort of dead space over here into a berry patch. Ooh, ladybug. Nice to see you. Super low maintenance, tons of food. Or if we head over here, we've got your traditional beds where of course I'm growing food. But you know, a non-traditional place just on this fence line, right in the wood chips. I'm growing cucumbers, I'm growing beans. So when you're taking a little stroll through the garden, you can always be asking yourself, is there room to squeeze in more food? All right, as we walk through the pollination garden, lesson number nine is a huge mindset shift I've had over the years, which is embracing pollinators and plant diversity. Literally a beautiful moth just landed on the camera. Oh, when I first started gardening, I only cared about growing food. Every square inch had to produce something I could eat. Flowers, they kind of felt like a waste of space. But over time I realized food doesn't grow in isolation. It grows as part of an ecosystem. And the more diversity I added to my garden, the healthier everything became. So now I intentionally plant flowers throughout my vegetable beds because not only does it look nice, but they attract beneficial insects that are going to pollinate my crops. They help control pests and they create just a much healthier and balanced garden. And that's just annual flowers. Right here is the perennial flower garden. And it wasn't always this lush and full of life. Over the years, I've continued to just build it out with different plants. And now it's just an unbelievable source of life in the garden. And because of all that, it's one of my favorite places to just hang out and watch the nature around me. All right, I'm ending on what has been the most humbling part of gardening by far, the biggest lesson of all, which is embracing imperfection. Because for me, I am definitely a bit of a perfectionist and that's always going to be in direct conflict with growing food. Nature has a mind of its own. Every year is going to be completely different. Some crops are going to thrive, others are going to struggle, and you really don't get to choose. Take this year, for example, we had a very cold spell in spring. So all the trees bloomed with beautiful flowers and then a lot of flowers died and they didn't properly pollinate. So less fruit. But that colder weather on the other hand, was the perfect conditions for all of these young brassicas to really thrive. And don't get me started on these animals. I have tried everything to protect these fruits. Look what the squirrels do around here. They will chew right through the mesh netting and through the freaking plastic cage on these peaches. Now, does that frustrate me? Hell yeah. Gardening can be devastating, but every year, nature's going to teach me something. I'm going to learn. I'm going to come back stronger. And what I've started to do that's helped me a lot is not judge my garden on perfection because that's impossible. Or is everything perfect? Who knows? I started judging my garden on the prior year because generally things do improve year to year. And that's sort of my new goal. Am I continuing to get better at this? Am I producing more food every year? Because all of this that we're doing, it's not about reaching some finish line. It's one long journey of learning, experimenting, and getting a little better every single season. And honestly, that's what keeps it so exciting every single year. I am going to shut this camera off because I chose to film this video like an idiot during a heat wave. And I'm about to pass out.