My Mom and I dipped our toes into the idea of growing our own food during the pandemic and then a year later we wanted to try our hand at homesteading. Your videos and Jacques’ videos have helped me a lot and I feel like I’ve learnt so much from the both of you and some of the other gardening RU-vidrs here and I’m beyond grateful for the sheer amount of inspiration and education you’ve given me. Lots of love from Jamaica and I bless you with exquisite and bountiful harvests till the end of time
one of my favorite ways to eat eggplants is covered in panko and deep fried- I use a mandolin to slice the eggplant into circles and then dip in egg, flour, egg, and then panko, fry them up in vegetable oil until golden brown. Delicious!
The garden burnout comment was great. I live in Maine and I get excited about gardening in January, work pretty hard from May-July, then really look forward to August/Sept. when I can start putting beds to sleep and take a break. Down time is key for recharging and creativity, planning the next cool stuff in the garden and making important changes.
@@kdavis4910 The project backlog that isn't even gardening can get wild. I need a proper compost bin system, trellis system for 40 wine grape vines, another one for table grapes, 20' long raised strawberry bed....
Hi Kevin thanks for answering my question! The pond being a favourite totally makes sense to me. I think having water that provides both functionality and beauty is so important in the garden - and yours is particularly impressive! We're going to be installing irrigation in our garden this year, can't wait to stop dragging the hose around lol 😁
thank you for answering my question!! I think it would be a fun video idea is "a day in the life of bobka" having a GoPro camera and seeing how she interacts with the garden
My biggest surprise when I bought a suburban home with a huge yard: woodchucks expanding their burrow intersected a trash pit/burn pit from the 1920s-1930s and collapsing a good 6ft section of the ground. I came home from work and found a mound of glass, charcoal, and bone smack in the middle of the backyard. 😅
I love hearing other people admit to the burn out. It makes me feel better and oddly, knowing I’m not the only one who wants to go out in the garden in mid August makes it easier for me to do.
Oh yeah! I love her no waste mentality. I must admit, I have not been the best steward with my chickens' eggs. I am challenging myself right now to use, preserve or be a blessing to someone else.
I could make jars of pasta sauces with all those tomatoes!! Yummy! I have a packed small garden but I’m still planting veggies!! I can’t wait to plant tomatoes etc etc.
I'm in Goodyear, AZ I own 3 1/2 acres of 5 acre of family land and next door is 10 acres of empty land we had a ditch cut and are able to get irrigation! You can move next door to us we wont mind at all!
I can’t believe your neighbours haven’t been inspired to garden by you! I would absolutely love to have a neighbour like you, I would probably just stand at your fence and stare at your garden all day (probably best you don’t have me as a neighbour then 😄).
I’m sure you’ve gotten this suggestion before, but you should make baba ganoush with all those eggplants! I don’t like the texture of them and they usually don’t taste like anything normally, but baba ganoush is delicious. A nice, smokey dip and blending it gets rid of the bad texture.
I can recall the first epic homestead episode where you revealed your plans; it was real exciting back then ; i've watched every video since! so you are clearly doing something right! :) Thank you and congratulations on your growth and success.
We'd LOVE to have you in North East Texas. The zoning is the same & I have the PERFECT little town for you. Just let me know. Pricing is amazing & the neighbors are wonderful. Several of our friends from NorCal came to visit & they ALL are moving here now. 😀
I can’t wait to see the Epic/MeatEater video(s). I’m a fan of the MeatEater channel’s shows and a regular podcast listener. I might just be their only vegetarian fan. Then you dropped a Food52 collab on us too? I owe my new found pie crust making skills to Erin McDowell from Food52. Content like this is why I love your channel. You’re really hitting it out of the park Kevin!
I love the greenhouse series idea. I'm on a small urban lot, 6k sqft, and most of that is in the front yard. While I haven't had problems with a front yard garden (I've met so many neighbors while out gardening) I am concerned with having a greenhouse out there, plus I need a small option for a 40x60 foot area that has multiple raised beds within it. Love to see how you all at EG/EH can give guidance on those circumstances. Love watching you all! 😻
You, Kevin, have inspired me to start gardening this year and it's been a huge undertaking to turn my yards into a habitable growing area. Lot's of invasive pothos, skunkvine, goosefoot plants, and weeds! But so far i've got a bunch of little seedlings and some of them are even starting to flower! super excited. Thanks for your videos!
Thank you for the video. Y'all have inspired me and given me so many ideas for my own garden. Was talking to my husband about building some raised beds for the front yard, adding some currants and tea bushes, and extending the main in ground garden in the back. I have to fence the back garden because of deer 🦌 but that's ok, that's why we plan. Thanks again for the wonderful video! 💜🔮🌱🐾
I would love to live in San Diego's climate with a year round grow season. The lack of water is def. terrifying though. I'm looking forward to your next Apocalypse challenge! I don't know about limiting yourself to just what you can produce on your property, but I'm here for it okay! 😆 I enjoyed the bartering, the foraging, the fishing (even though I thought you could do better than just anchovies), and the harvest meal with your friends.
You just perfectly described how my brain and memory work. I'm so glad to hear there are more like us! Whatever clicks just never goes away. Personally I really appreciate the way you structure and present information. I noticed you easily summarize and simply explain complex processes. Then you manage to boil theory down to practical guidelines that never feel like hard rules. I'm gardening in northern europe, a completely different climate, but just the way you approach the process, i feel, has been one of the most valuable resources for my past two years of experience. I'm a biologist and, even though you are not, the way you think makes sense to my from that perspective. Keep it up. I would love to keep learning from you.
If you did raise a crop fish like tilapia, you should consider feeding it a diet that has omega-3's included, as there was research shown that it shows up in the 'end product', and without it, they are pretty omega-3 devoid (especially compared to wild-caught).
The people that lived in my mom's place long long ago apparently used to bury some of their garbage in the backyard. We found all kinds of old bottles and tins too.
Thanks for answering my history question! It is really amazing that the home was in within one family from the time it was built to when it was flipped. Since they/their descendants are still around and they already contacted you, you should definitely ask if they have any old pictures of the house through the decades, especially exterior (but interior could be inspiring for your inside home design, I remember you saying that wasn’t your forte). You could have an early one or two framed, or if there’s a lot, you could put copies together in an album to show the home through the years. If the exterior is close to original, look into applying for historic designation and Mills Act; even if you don’t qualify now, you might in the future as the home gets more and more historic with time. 😂
I am definitely thankful that you woke up one day and decided to record your journey through RU-vid. Your story is one that has and will help many! Stay Blessed
Great video. It made me smile to hear you hunt and fish. I have been hunting since I was a young girl. Our freezer is always stocked with venison. It is the best! I have a stone patio that I container garden on. I have several 25 gallon tubs, an area for a chiminea and two fountains. We live on 45 acres in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. I love your channel. It was nice to get to know you a bit better.
I love that Jacques and Kevin are always in a video with their antics. It makes gardening so much fun. AMA for Bobka, what is his origins? And for Kevin's AMA: Are you going to get a dog? Will you plant kiwifruit? Can you make videos about kiwis.
Not sure if this was said already, but Tilapia is not legal to keep in california though they would probably do well personality wise with Koi. I'd probably say that you may want to look into some of the members of the US native sunfish family.
I recently made my first Epic Gardening purchase and bought and built a Birdie's bed for my parents. They love it. Keep up the good work: my wife and I also started a business from scratch, and it's not easy. Regarding the chickens, I got mine a few weeks before you did and it's interesting to see the mirrored experiences. Obviously they'll try to eat edibles directly, but there were two issues with free ranging that I wasn't initially expecting which I should warn about: 1. They will make any open mulch+dirt space a dust bath, including pots and raised beds. Every pot with an open square foot of space has been clawed out, even >2ft high pots containing dragonfruit. So I've had to put up hardware cloth and chicken wire in or around everything with open space. My wife complains that the garden looks like a prison (but she still loves the chickens). I've found the least obtrusive mechanism to be hardware cloth flush with the mulch, followed by low rings of hardware cloth with pointy ends sticking up that can't be easily moved either by their size or with landscape staples. I built my coop, so I had a bunch of scrap sitting around. You don't have to cover it completely: just take away anything that's an open patch. 2. They really like to strip the leaves and stems off of fruit plants. At least a dozen strawberry plants have kicked the bucket, the lower 2 feet of my raspberry canes, and my blueberry bushes. Not so much the figs, maybe the latex sap makes it unappealing.
Id like to know from Bobka if she was confident all the enemies had been destroyed before her snooze. :) Im really excited youre doing collabs with James and Mark.
Oooh, ooh. Tilapia/garden field trip!! Check out Abraxis high school in Poway. They raise and sell plants and more recently added Tilapia! I’m sure they would love to have you out there. Supports all the unique programs for transition students and gives them unique experiences.
As you said, showing us the epic options and how you and Jacques talk about stuff inspires our creative thinking and trying stuff out in our own world. Thank you
It'd be interesting to get on your county website and see if you can pull up old arial footage of your property and find the site of that spring well. Going back through photos all the way to the 1930s really helped me understand some of the things about my property.
I am planning a trip to oceanside this January... Do you allow people to come check out the garden? I have my own gardening channel and watching you accomplish what you have has definitely given me motivation in the past. We make it out there once or twice a year and we love the San Diego area! You truly live in a beautiful place.
I would like to see an Epic Gardening collab video with James Prigioni about Food Forest. His excitement would go well in an Epic video... FYI, no ties to James haha.... just watch you both.
With increasingly frequent water shortages, are you going to look into dry farming some suitable crops in the future? Extra collected rain water can be stored in the ground if your natural rainfall is not enough.
while I completely understand not being able to share all the costs, even when channels receive product or services I think being transparent about the estimated values would be so helpful and educational for viewers. At this point most people know youtube is a business, sharing real world costs helps people make their own decisions and to that end, "expensive" isn't a word that means the same thing to everyone, I have worked in the luxury space for 20 years and what my clients consider "expensive" is unattainable for myself-it's relative to your budget, income and frankly values. You and likely your viewers value what their gardens bring to their lives much more than an average joe so buying a dream plant or tool isn't expensive-it's worth it. All the best!
For sure - I wasn't trying to be evasive, it's just I haven't actually tallied it up. If you start to include team salaries, etc. it gets even more confusing. I'll have to do a more expanded video!
Love the way your homestead is growing . I’m in zone 9a/b in Texas, my main crops this year were tomatoes, eggplants, okra and peppers. My green beans, cucumbers and watermelon 🍉 didn’t do good at all. But then again we had a heatwave and drought. Looks like we’re finally getting some rain. Happy gardening Kevin and many blessings to you and Jacque.
In my part of Australia (and many more) if we don’t use shadecloth over the vegetables and plant pots, we run an 80% chance of losing all our hard work. Do you protect your investment (vegetables) or leave them to the elements
Dude you need to tap back into that natural spring and do some cool stuff with it. Even if it has to be done on the hush-hush from the city or something lol.
Thank you for taking the time to answer viewers' questions. Just a suggestion to improve content...how about adding a picture window in a quadrant of the frame (think: news anchor) where you can add photos of the things you are describing? For example, this would've been helpful in the segment where you were talking about garden shoes. If you in the mood, it can also add a comedic element, too.
Kevin, Aquarium expert, here. Please, do not add tilapia, or any other large, aggressive cichlid, in w/ the koi. They will not play well together. If you wish to add something different &/or unusual, a catfish.might be a much better choice. A couple suggestions: a mid-sized or smaller pleco, which will also help w/ maintenance by noshing on algae. You'll still need to feed it/them after dark (sobtge koi don't gobble up all their food), but they really do help w/ algae. A native catfish such as a bullhead or madtom (Yellow & Brown bullheads stay reasonably sized @ about a foot long. I had a Brown bullhead for many years that even learned to come to the surface & feed from my hand. 😊
I'll buy one of those extra broadforks from ya. I've been itching to get one soon & I think we're not too far from each other, neighbor (I live in Escondido)!
