I Built a Complete Kitchen Garden in 4 Months (While Working Full Time)

Is it possible to create a food system in your yard that can feed a family of four in as little as four months? My name is Johnny and I'm going to show you exactly how I did just that in this video. Last year I built a garden from scratch that grew all of my own family's produce in a 50 by 50 size garden space and then I moved to a different location. Here I started this garden just four months ago. This garden is only 40 by 40 feet and I'm going to show you exactly step by step how I did this on my free time to produce more food than I could possibly ever eat. I know, I know what you're thinking. No, you don't need to quit your job. You don't need to have an acre of land. I'm talking small scale on five hours a week, an hour a day. If you're feeling ambitious and you want to get out there and integrate it into your life, you can do this with a full-time job and a family. You can do this without the years of trial and error if you have the right system. If you want to go from just watching videos to actually growing a thriving garden and producing your own food this season, join the free Regenerative Garden Club by clicking the link below this video and it's where I'm teaching exactly step by step how I design and create these thriving regenerative kitchen gardens to feed myself, feed my family, and impact the planet. And I'll see you there. So I definitely know what it can feel like to want to start a garden and not know where to start, right? Not even know where to begin or just going through the years of trial and error, trying to figure things out, watching YouTube videos, feeling so overwhelmed on where to start after watching a video, not even knowing your next steps, right? I understand that place and it's not that you don't have a green thumb, it's just that you haven't followed a proven system that works. So I'm going to outline exactly what that system can look like and what you can do step by step to follow it. So definitely watch this whole video, implement it step by step, take notes, take it seriously, and let's dive in. So first I want to share that this is not land that I own. This is land, this is somebody else's yard that I turned into a garden. I made a Facebook post and shared, hey I need garden space, I'm moving, I don't have garden space, who can let me grow a garden in their yards? And I met the people here, I made friends with them, and they let me turn their yard into a garden in exchange for produce and the garden itself. And so I found the space and when we got here, this whole area was full of brambles and bindweed. So blackberry and bindweed are two very aggressive, invasive plants with deep roots that are really hard to get rid of. And there was a bunch of trash and stuff all laying around here. So the first thing that we had to do was weed whack this entire area and just cut it all down. I got one of those weed whackers with a metal tri-tip on it, like the cutting blades, and just cut down all those brambles because we couldn't even get a mower in here because there was a bunch of trash and stuff. So we had to pick up all that trash, cut all those brambles down, and that was my first step, was just clearing this area. Really don't forget that after I cleared this area, I went through the design process. So the first step in starting any garden is designing it. That's a whole process in itself. Definitely don't skip that process. It is really crucial to design your garden and your system off setting up right. We're not going to talk about that in this video because this is all about creating the garden, but I did think a lot and create the entire design before I even got to the stage of creating the garden. So once we cleared all this area out, we mowed it down. You couldn't even till the ground here. The ground was so thickly matted with invasive roots that what we had to do is we had to broad fork the entire area. So what we did was we actually went through and broad forked the entire zone. Sometimes I'll start in a garden by tilling it just one time to establish the space and break up compaction. A tiller here wouldn't, it would just bounce off the top and get all tangled up in the roots. So what we had to do is actually broad fork this entire garden area. So really that entire step of broad forking up the garden was to eliminate and pull out all of the roots. So essentially we had to, because there's so much bindweed in here, we had to pull out all of those little tiny bindweed roots. Otherwise, they're just going to come right back. They're rhizomal. And so we actually had to pull out all of the root systems very thoroughly. So we went through like a fine tooth comb and did that. So if I were to go back, if I had more time, if I had like an extra season, what the ideal thing would have been is to clear this whole area and then silage tarp it to kill everything without having to broad fork it and go through it and then go and establish a garden. But I simply just didn't have that much time. I only have four months to set this garden up and get things that you can actually use. And generally that's a lesson. If you have more time, typically you can set a garden up right by having more time to properly set it up. So essentially once I'm starting from bare ground here, started laying out the beds and the pathways. So I took stakes and string, rebar and string, and started marking out where my pathways were going to go, where my beds were going to go. That's after we removed all the invasive weeds and grasses. And also I marked really important things like where's the fence line going to be, where the compost, where's the compost going to be, where are the gates going to be located, where's the greenhouse going to be located. I went through and I started marking out all of that in real time in my garden and we started building it over time. So these beds behind me were the first beds to go in. So I did, I flagged out those beds. I started creating the beds. I started adding all these amazing life-giving inputs like compost and biochar and worm castings and compost teas. And starting with compost is really important. This is the easiest thing to start with. But I started amending the soil as I'm working it, as I'm planting it. And then I made these first three beds behind me, right? So I made, I made these first three beds and then I started planting them because by that time it was already, it was probably March by that time. So I wanted to start getting stuff in the ground. So I didn't build this entire garden and then start planting stuff. I did it in stages. So every time I would make a new bed, I would immediately plant it out right away to get stuff growing. And you can do that in building out your garden in layers. It took me months to build all the beds in here. And I just kept planting and planting and planting each bed as I would make it. Or so I implemented the process of actually creating the beds, step by step, adding another bed, adding another crop, and just kept on planting throughout the time. Implementing succession and polyculture by interplanting a bunch of different crops together. And at the same time, I was bringing my friends in here as much as I could. Building community is so important. I was, you know, telling my friends, I'm in the garden at this day, at this time, if you want to come, invites open. And people started filtering in and helping me create the garden space. A quick note on that, I would organize garden work parties. So I would literally be like, y'all, I got food, I got music, we got games, we got fun, outdoor activities, come help me build my garden, have a shared experience. You would be amazed how many people wanted to get into the garden, get their hands dirty, and work together alongside me and each other. In all this meantime, I'm, you know, looking for materials. I signed up for chip drop. I got materials dumped on my site as close to the garden site as possible. I was getting mulch delivered. I was, you know, you can call a local arborist to get them to deliver mulch. Also looking around for compost sources, like talking to local farmers, going to farmers markets, looking for sources of manure or other compost. Also building my compost system and my fertility systems was one of the first things that I did. I put in those compost bays behind me and started adding materials into them right away. Started adding materials into the garden beds and starting to build my own fertility in the garden system was one of the first actions that I took. I went to Lowe's and got one of those pallets, picked up those pallets, and built that compost system along with those first beds and that compost bay was one of the beginning stages of the garden really starting to come together. And one of the keys here was just really to stay consistent with it. So I would, you know, regularly be out here just continuously making more beds. I would be working on this. So essentially I figured out my system and my plan and my tools and I would just work through. I made all of these beds, assembled the greenhouse, got the greenhouse up and running with this frame and the trellis system and got the beds in place, mulched. And during that whole time I was experimenting with different watering systems. It's the simplest thing that I started off with was just a hose from the spigot off at the house, ran a hose to a very simple overhead sprinkler. And that was the first water system that I established just to get that going and have something really easy to water my garden. And then I started experimenting with more automated systems. I got a timer and different types of irrigation, like the soaker hose in the greenhouse, and then set up sprinklers in different areas of the garden to water it, this entire space as it expanded. So I started adding water systems. I added the dunk barrel, which allows me to just come in and dunk a watering can into the barrel so I don't have to fill up every time I can just spot water with just having that. So I got my fertility system set up, my beds, mulching the pathways, starting to eliminate all the weeds, got my water system dialed in. And at that point I hadn't even built the fence yet. After I started getting my beds in place was to get the trellises up. So I started building simple bamboo trellises with bamboo that I collected to add vertical space in the garden. So the first trellis that I built was a simple A-frame trellis. I started adding these simple TP type trellises around and then just continuously adding more vertical growing space. And my intention with the bamboo is that it's going to last multiple seasons. It's here now. Obviously it degrades because it's natural, but the structure is in place for me to grow with. I also built the trellis inside of the greenhouse to get the tomatoes planted at a good time. Here's an example of a little bit more of the automated sprinkler system. So I have the sprinkler that turns on different times in different zones. It's a simple just automated sprinkler that runs these hoses to these sprinklers that sit on top of these T-posts here. So this will go and it will water this whole quadrant of the garden on an automated time. And this area of the garden, the back half, are the newest beds. So I didn't get to building these beds until about a month or two ago and just got them put in and planted sweet potatoes in them. So as I was going I was planting warmer and warmer crops as the season progressed. And you can do this at any time of the year. It's better to do this honestly a year ahead of time so that when spring comes you're ready to plant. In this area, as it was sitting, I just kind of covered it with a silage tarp. Just a tarp to keep the weeds down and anything from growing and just suppress it. And that actually made it a lot easier because it was under tarp for like a month or two before I even got to it. So it made the bed prep a lot simpler. While I was working on the beds getting put in, I was also working on and planting out the edible perennial border. So this whole mulch border, it's hard to see because I just cut the grass, but this is all a two foot mulch line around the whole edge here. And we have all different types of flowers and herbs like perennial onions and thyme and oregano and annual flowers, bee balm. So this whole edge I'm working on planting out right and building and mulching this edge to keep weeds from growing into the fence line. We have sage and strawberries and comfrey and I'm still working on planting out this whole edge. In hindsight, I definitely recommend putting the fence in before doing all of that because essentially we all built these beds and then planted out this mulched border and then I went ahead and built the fence. There was just a lot going on. There's a lot of different projects in the works as you can tell, right? We were like doing all of this and I just think it's better to have the fence line in because then you're not having to navigate around all the plantings on either side of the fence. It's kind of a pain to have to navigate around all of these plants. So in order of operations, typically like even starting with the fence and then starting to build beds and then planting is best, is definitely the best order of operations. I was kind of gathering materials and doing things all at the same time. Just wanted to put that in a note because then I went ahead and put the fence in. Just went with a typical t-post and wire fence to go all the way around the garden and so I put that whole fence line in and then I built these gates just like super simple fence pickets from Lowe's and a simple latch with wooden posts with all the beds in and the soil amended and the wood chips and the pathways and the trellises up and the compost system up, the water system, then the greenhouse and the fencing. This starts to feel like a really amazing abundant garden space and really that framework is in a systematic step-by-step order. The process is designed and then you create the garden and that's iterative. You can do that over time and then you're planting, grow. Then you get into stewarding the garden long term, understanding soil fertility, seasonal understanding, pest and disease management and then rooting down and learning how to refine that system year after year and teaching it to other people, sharing food with your community. That's the process and now the garden is looking like this after just four months of work. I mean we've been harvesting hundreds and hundreds of pounds out of this space and it's just abundant. It's prolific. I'm constantly planting in succession and just reaping more out of the garden and experimenting and learning. In summary, my honest take on this is that it's best to bring in as many people as you can into the garden creation and build process and just stay consistent. The power of consistency. The only way that you're going to fail is if you quit. You have to have the right system, understand exactly how to design and lay out the garden and then just stay consistent with it. Show up day after day, week after week and then something amazing like this happens and there's many more things still coming in this garden. It's not complete and I am a firm believer that the garden is never complete. There's so many different perennials that I'm propagating to bring into the garden. I'm just going to plant out this whole edge here. We have blueberries but there's still so much room and space for other perennials in here. I'm working on willow fencing for creating willow archways. I'm also really interested in training fruit trees along the fence line so I want to incorporate some fruit tree propagation and fruit trees and more perennials into the garden as it evolves and establish itself. I'm also going to be working on a rainwater catchment system off of the toolshed so that we can have a fully off-grid water system that's bringing water into the garden. There is so much evolving and changing and ever going, ever working on as a consistent project. It's something really important to remember. This is a lifestyle. You are consistently working on this. It doesn't reach a point where it just ends. It's transformation. It's growth. It's a consistent regenerative process. If this really inspires you, if you want to take this to the next level, join the Regenerative Garden Club. It's completely free and you can learn how to take your first steps in setting up a regenerative kitchen garden and be immersed with other people in community learning the same thing, sharing skills, sharing knowledge. Click the link below this video and you can join. I would love to see you there. If you want to just keep learning, you want to keep absorbing this knowledge and information, click the next video to take your next step.