The Most Productive Tiny Garden We’ve Ever Filmed

Most people think you need acres of land to grow serious amounts of food, but the garden I'm visiting today proves otherwise, packing in a truly astonishing harvest of vegetables into a positively tiny city yard. Think peas and squash climbing skywards, raised beds positively bursting at the seams, and not a solitary square inch of space wasted. Marv, hello, lovely to meet you. Great to have you here. Now this absolutely is a masterclass in packing stuff in. I don't think I've ever seen a garden quite as rammed as this is, and you're growing mainly in raised beds and containers, is that right? A lot of the stuff that we grow is mainly containers and raised bed. One of the reasons for that is because we're looking at behind us is a black walnut tree. Oh yeah, and that's quite famous for being allelopathic, I think the word is, like it inhibits growth. Yeah, it's got like a jugalone chemical in it, so especially with the leaves and the fruits they'll fall into your garden bed, but that's not our concern, it's mainly the roots. They can spread out and take a lot of nutrients from what we're growing, so with raised bed it does help us grow a lot more food that way. That makes sense, and they're good depth, aren't they? They're just over a foot deep or thereabouts, that's fantastic, yeah. Do you know the total square area if you added all the beds out of interest? Oh with all the beds, I think it's roughly about 148 square meters, so we're utilizing all of our space. I mean honestly, even if you have like a tiny smaller space than this, you can still grow your own food, right? You can grow vertically, you can grow in containers, which is really great as well. Because looking at this, you could kind of just take one row or one and you could, like this is sort of like modular, isn't it? So you could almost pack it in to just take a bit of that depending on your size of garden, and I'm interested to know what the soil mix is here. This looks like fabulous soil here. What was the original mix that went in here? Yeah, whenever we fill our garden beds, we actually first, before we talk about the soil mix, we don't fill up the entire beds. These beds are quite deep, so we do want to save some money there, so we do about 50% is rotted logs, twigs and whatever we can compost from the garden, and then the rest of the mix is about equal parts of either coco coir or peat, perlite or vermiculite, and then compost. Okay, equal parts, lovely, and that's quite cool. So obviously as the logs and the sticks and stuff at the bottom rots down, it sinks down, but then presumably you're adding stuff each year to kind of maintain that level. What do you add to kind of maintain that fertility? So yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that, because everything will start to sink, and then in the fall what we do is we chop a lot of leaves and leave it on top, and then in the spring we do add about an inch or two layer of compost to start our spring growth. Okay, and is that stuff like garden compost that you make yourself? Yes. Fantastic. Well, it seems to be working, doesn't it, judging by how lush everything is? Thanks. This is a wonderful tunnel-like effect, isn't it? Oh yeah, everything is starting to grow now, but we're in a transition right now between spring and summer, so we still have our peas in here, we still have our cabbages, and then celery will be here for a long time, I mean they don't mind, but in the part of the transition we're adding our squash in here, we got bitter melons, they're starting to grow on the other side as well. So as the cool season crops are kind of done, it frees up the space and those guys can get on with it, yeah? Exactly. I have to say, I don't know what you're doing, but these are absolutely pristine, aren't they? Well, some of them are being attacked, but very, very minimal. We did spray some nematodes earlier, so that takes care of a lot of the cabbage moth's larvae, but prior to that one we had a netting on all these as well. So when they're a bit smaller, just when they're more vulnerable, yeah. These are beautiful. What variety is this one, the purple? This one's called purple miss, so this one is better as peas, so you kind of like open the pods and eat them that way. On the opposite side, this is a Oregon pea, so they're much smaller, so these are dwarf varieties. So one of the reasons why we did that is because we want the light to pass through still, so we got a smaller one here and a taller one on this side. It's a dappled shade as it comes through, yeah. Oh, it's looking so vibrant, isn't it? Jealous! So I'm noticing, Marv, you're growing a lot of things in raised beds, but you've also got these lovely cloth pots here. What do you reckon are the advantages for these? With grow bags, honestly, one of the most advantages for this one is they're foldable. Normally, you can store them away, but because we use them year-round, that part really becomes useless. But it is breedable, so one of the main things with grow bags is that it prunes the roots, so you're not getting your tomatoes root-bound, for example. As soon as it starts coming out, air just dries it up, and then it gives you a much healthier root system. The only thing is when you're growing grow bags, if you're in a really hot climate, it's probably not ideal because they can dry up much faster. Yeah, I guess it wicks out the moisture a bit quicker, so maybe not good for Arizona or somewhere like that. Yeah, not ideal for those locations, but you can still try as long as you're providing enough water. We have a drip irrigation in here. Yeah, I've seen that, so does that come on, do you just sort of turn that on yourself as and when you feel it's needed, or is there a timer? It is on a timer, so we do change that when it's raining a lot, so we turn it off when we're having too much rain, because you don't want to have too much moisture in your garden. Exactly, and then for the most part, we turn it on for 20 minutes in the morning every three days. Okay, so it's quite efficient delivery, isn't it? It's not wasting it, and I see a lot of your raised beds are homemade, can we go and have a look at those? I can see you're quite a handy man here, look you've got these lovely wooden beds, and then are these, I'm guessing you've made these supports as well, because they're all wood, is that true? Yeah, actually I do love, you know, woodworking, it's one of my hobbies as well, aside from gardening. We built this, this is one of our first beds that we've ever built, actually it's made out of cedar, so it lasts much longer, and over here this is one of the easiest trellis that we made, it's just a string trellis with, you know, three supports, making sure that, you know, we can build that, you know, square pattern. You've got the rigidity from the cross braces there, yeah, and it's very strong, it even held a pumpkin at one point. Oh right, and this side here, you've got like, it looks like a kind of protection here, some sort of, well maybe initially cold weather and laterally pest protection kind of device. Yeah, so this has a cover during the winter season, you know, for late fall or early spring, I put a cover on, it does protect a lot of our vegetables in here, especially when we're overwintering stuff, so I bring a lot of the smaller pots inside here, and it keeps them well protected, they'll come back, like we have a mint over there that's really small. Yeah, and this is a beauty, this looks like horseradish, and yeah, look at that, that's probably the most robust one I've seen. How do you use this? It is, we do use it as a garnish, you know, you just kind of like, you know, eat it, grind it, make your eyes water with the heat. It does, a small amount is good, you don't need to eat a lot of it, but the good thing about the radish here is, this comes back every year, and we find that this spot is the most shaded spot in our garden, so right now we're trying to grow bok choy, which is sort of doing all right, but it's still kind of struggling, but you know, not compared to the horseradish here, it's flourishing in the shaded area. It's great to have, this is probably, as you said, the densest shade in the garden, and it's good that every zone, if you like, in your garden has a crop that's perfect for it. Exactly, and that's one of the beauty of our garden here, we experiment, we try to grow as much as we can, even in a shaded area, figure out what plant grows really well in that spot, and then figure out what plant really grows in a really sunny spot as well. So this right here is actually a really good example of how we try things out, we have this red currant here, it wasn't in this spot before, it was in a really shaded spot right over that corner, then we moved it here, I mean, mind you, it wasn't easy to move, yeah, but it was worth it, now it's doing so much better. I love this because this is only what, I don't know, two foot, 60 centimeters across, and you know, you kind of want to get, but this fills in that space, it's like every little space is optimized, but it's still practical enough that you can access the ones in the corner there. Yeah, it's absolutely more than enough, I mean, like, usually when we're walking in a garden, we're not walking as a crowd. Yeah, it's true, we're just easier and more nimble when it's one. Yeah, so we're also trying to grow this much taller, because it is a bush plant, we trimmed a lot of the bottom and kind of raising it up like a standard, and these are clearly made as well, yeah, and I'm guessing this is the secret behind in here, your bok choy or pak choy here, I've honestly never seen them quite as healthy and blemish free as these, and I guess this is giving a bit of shade to stop them bolting and what. Yeah, exactly, so this little shade here, we use it for dual purpose, it does act as a shade, and we also use it as a cover when we're planting our garlic in fall, it prevents like squirrels from digging through them, so yeah, it's removable, that's the beauty of it. In terms of space, you're talking about space, this door is actually removable as well, so it just comes out, it's not just bending like that, so it's in a way, just slide it out, brilliant, there you go, now you got the space in here, and chard, and oh, it's a little paradise, exactly, look at that, wow, these are fab garlic, it looks like they're hardnecks, because I've got the cut there for the scapes, yeah, hardnecks are hardier, aren't they, so could you grow softnecks in this climate, or is it a little bit too cold? We tried growing softneck, but you'd have to do that earlier in spring, so that's a little bit of an experiment in Canadian weather, but here in Canada, we do prefer to grow hardneck varieties, because they do much better in cooler weather, so you can plant them in the, like it's the last job of the autumn, and then you've obviously got, you move your cover there, so you're getting two uses out of it, and then it looks like there's sort of old leaves and stuff, to maybe for cold protection, is that why they're there? Yeah, so basically we have to add mulch, just to protect the garlic cloves as they, you know, as they go dormant throughout the winter season, this is going to be covered in a lot of snow during the winter season, so that offers a little bit of protection, yeah, and actually paring through here, you've already planted squash plants in between the garlic, yeah, so we do like to get ahead of it, it's called relay planting, so we know that these garlic, we're going to be harvesting them in July and August, so when they're gone, we've already got almost like a full plant in here, yeah, so ready to go, and also in the back, we have cucamelon as well, they're ready to go, so they're such fragile little things, aren't they? Yes, right now they look small, but they'll take over the whole, yeah, yeah, and how do you use the cucamelons, because they're a little bit unusual, so not everyone's going to be familiar with them, yeah, so not everyone likes them, they're almost like, tiny watermelons, but they're more like cucumbers, yeah, we use them to, actually you just eat them as is, but we actually pickle them, so that's much easier that way, to preserve them, because they're going to be, like I said, they're going to be, there's going to be a ton, tons of like cucamelons, and sometimes you don't know what to do with them, so we pickle them, great, so Ben, I just wanted to show you our little pizza corner here, and our curry corner here, so basically we're trying to grow in a 20 and 15 gallon pot, okay, to create our own like pizza station, and also like a curry station, so I can see you got basil, oregano, tomato, is that a sweet, or this is a sweet pepper here, okay, that would make sense, yeah, yeah, and then we got a Roma tomato, we got a little bit of onion left here, and then we have marigold here as a pest control, brilliant, I mean oregano helps with that as well, yeah, so here I can see this, this is cilantro or coriander, and what's this, that one is really fragrant, this is called a curry leaf, oh so the curry leaf you get in, right, okay, oh sorry, I just cut myself, yeah, and then this over here is a pepper as well, but it's chili, oh okay, so you've got some spicy notes, or warm notes here, and we got a tomato on there as well, right, I love the thematic, yeah, exactly, going on here, it's great, and we also have to, because we're planting so much in here, we have to think about where the sun hits them, the tallest plant or tomato is right at the back, makes sense, so right now, as you can see, we're getting a lot of light on the front, yeah, perfect, and what's this here, is this watercress, yeah, this is our watercress here, so we're growing them in two locations, one in actual water, yeah, in a little fountain that we made here, so a lot of these squirrels, they do get thirsty, that's why they bite on tomatoes, yeah, so hopefully they won't take our apples here, but they, we offer them a drinking station in here, along with, you know, bees as well, so they've even got turkey tail growing, yeah, so this is something that we added on this year as well, and this water fountain is solar powered, which is right beside you, okay, and this will be quite nice for, like in a dry spell for the birds to come, yeah, exactly, themselves, kind of like a sort of North American English battle here, oregano, basil, tomato, oregano, basil, tomato, exactly, at least we can agree that this is pepper, yeah, yeah, we can agree on that one at least, yeah, yeah, so a lot of our stuff that we're growing in a garden, we want to make sure that they're dual purpose, so we want to maximize our space as much as possible, for example, we got echinacea here, they do attract a lot of pollinators, same with American elder, and we have borage as well, they do the same job, attract a lot of pollinators, but with echinacea, you can use them medicinally, okay, American elder, you can make tea or drinks with them, yeah, yeah, and then you can also eat the berries later on, and with borage, you can add them to your salad, nice, I like that, you'll go, yeah, every plant has to really earn its keep, doesn't it, in a space like this, exactly, yeah, yeah, and you'll see the hidden in the back here, we also have calendula, as you know, it attracts pests, yes, attracts pollinators, and also you can infuse them in oil, yeah, and I see here, looks like carrots in amongst your peppers, they don't compete, no, so the good thing about with carrots, when you combine them with peppers, they do act as a living mulch, okay, and the roots go deep, and I've noticed whenever I plant them with my peppers, both actually do well, right, as long as your peppers grow tall enough, I see, because at some point the carrots, the leaves will eventually cover them, but when that happens, I just kind of like bend them down, okay, give it a bit of light to get in there, yeah, so carrots are a great filler for us, yeah, we spread them all over empty spaces, just like so pinches, yeah, exactly, and it's always a great harvest when you get like a bonus carrot, yeah, well this is quite a cozy nook you brought us to Marvin, I like this, these like boxes, this kind of theatre of wall of fame of tomatoes here, obviously dwarf ones, yeah, so we wanted to make use of this space, because we don't get a lot of sunlight here as well, and if we can't grow anything along the walls, then we're not using that space properly, so we're growing, like I said, dwarf, micro dwarf tomatoes, so they won't grow any taller than two feet, so it's about 18 inch the most, and they'll produce tons of little cherry type tomatoes, even though it's shaded for most of the day, it's kind of all right, because it's still warm and what have you, yeah, oh yeah, it's still doing well, I mean tomatoes can do partial shade, they don't mind it as well, and as long as you're feeding them in this small container, and you're providing, you know, consistent water, they'll do fine, I'm definitely gonna have to try this in my garden, because this is like such a cool idea, and it like, it makes such good use of what might be a dead space, yeah, exactly, and then we even added like herbs in here, sometimes we'll switch it up, sometimes we'll do oregano, this year we're doing parsley, so aside from small plants, we like to mix things up, we do like to grow tiny little micro dwarf tomatoes, and also big plants like this winter melon, now this winter melon can produce a really, really heavy, large fruit, so we have to make sure that they're growing on the trellis, and this trellis has to be really sturdy, yeah, it does wobble, but it last two years ago, we grew two of them in there, and it supported it really well, so how big are they, if you show me like with your hands, oh like they can go that big, and are they winter melons, because they store at ambient temperature, you know, through the winter, I'm guessing, yeah, they'll last for a really long time, and what's great about them, you can, you can cook them, add them to your soup, or some people make winter melon candies with them, oh yeah, they're really sweet, so yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're growing a lot in this space, if you look behind you, we've got melons, we got whole beans, that's growing along with the melon, so a little bit of celery, we have kale, we have over there, a radish gone to seed, yeah, so these are radish pods, they're meant to grow that way, we eat it for the rash, but if you want to try them, go ahead, yeah, rat tail, is that what we call it, it's an interesting name, that's lovely, isn't it, oh yeah, you have to pick them, like nasturtium, quite sort of spicy, exactly, but you have to pick them really early, because the later they go, the harder the pods become, okay, yeah, and then behind you as well, there's squash here, and we're growing some watercress here, it's all going on, there's a lot going on in this space, yeah, exactly, so and then we have some lettuce still, even though it's in summer right now, so this lettuce can do really well in summer heat, actually, so yeah, I guess it's quite shaded here, so it helps it along, yeah, and it's also picking the right variety, that's a really great thing about it, so this variety specific is called new red fire, okay, it does really well on summer heat, so right, wow, this even pots on the steps, this is literally taking it to extremes, isn't it, making use of every little square inch of space wait till you get to this part though, like we do our best to utilize every step in our garden, even on the stairs there, this is quite a good vantage point as well, you can really see the full garden here, and yeah, more stuff here, so potatoes, peppers, and even a pineapple in Canada, exactly, no, we're just having fun with this one, we found this pineapple and we thought we'd try to grow it here anyways, and yeah, as you can tell, we do love peppers, and the potatoes here are really great, we're also growing actually watermelon in this spot, oh right, okay, yeah, and I've noticed this here, I recognize this, this is what we call chickweed, oh we call it chickweed here, you're growing it because it's edible, isn't it, you're growing it for salad as well, oh yeah, you can eat them, you can actually add them to smoothie as well, they taste really great along with watercress, oh nice, I was going to say, I can't imagine that everything else being so pristine, you've just got the weedy pot there, there must be a reason, yeah, we do use them, and then we have our herb section here, that's handy right outside the door there, yeah, it's got to be convenient and easy to just kind of harvest whenever you need to, yeah, look how healthy this comfrey is, do you use this for like around the garden for like cutting and yeah, we do a chop and drop and then add nutrients into the soil, lovely, and then this year actually squirrels got us, we tried growing corn and they've already destroyed some of our nuisance, yeah, yeah, but this is our three sister kind of combination, yeah, yeah, so you get beans, you get your corn and squash, lovely, is this guy to help with your pest control, a little bit, but mainly the marigold, oh yeah, well that's, yeah, yeah, and there's more like kind of mesh here for, you know, you're climbing squash and tomatoes here, isn't there, is this like a roll of mesh that you kind of staple onto these frames, how does it work, yeah, it's basically like a three feet mesh that I stapled, I put a bar in the middle, yeah, and when I built this, it was so long, I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but and how much plant I was going to grow, but it actually did well, because like now we're growing tomatoes, we got squash, they can vine as long as they want, yes, and really is vertical growing, isn't it, exactly, and we got like beans hiding behind, oh yes, this is going to look like literally another two or three weeks, it's just going to be a wall of green, yeah, this is usually like our, the best feature in a garden, yeah, once it's fully covered, like we got a jungle right here, yeah, marvel, see you got some okra over there, this is quite a good like kind of extra warm spot in here, I guess, yeah, yeah, they really like this spot, the okras, you got the peppers and these beans, they thrive in this condition, yeah, so do you start, where do you start all your, well, first of all, do you start all your plants from starts or seeds, what, how are you starting them all, we do all ours from seeds, we do it indoors as early as January, okay, but not everything started from seeds, of course, because we grow perennials as well, so we rely on those plants to come back, yeah, but for a good portion of it, we do start them from seeds, so all the annual vegetables, all from seeds, yes, they're all from seeds and some are actually not started indoors, they're sown directly, especially like radish, yes, we do that early spring, okay, yeah, Marv, I have to say I'm pretty humbled by just how many ideas there are here and how much is packed in, there's so many ideas for my garden, I reckon our viewers are going to love it as well, thank you, obviously, thank you, it's been really fun doing this tour and honored to have you here and I'm glad that you learned something from our garden, I hope your audience can use what you're showing today, pretty sure they will, thank you so much, thank you so much.