Thanks for the great content! I'm busy planning my garden & have been leaning towards raised beds due to a back problem. But I may end up doing more in-ground beds to start with due to cost factors & the warmer season getting well on its way! Starting small and working towards a market garden!
I only have a small piece of land to grow enough food for my family. My soil is too sandy, so I use a lot of compost and add kitchen scraps at least to change the texture of my soil. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, it is much appreciated
This channel is extremely helpful to me. I moved from Germany last year to the Caribbean. I have 60 acres of land wich is actually a horse farm and I’m in the process of transforming it to agriculture land. I have currently 25 horses and enough manure to plant my crops. I really appreciate you making these helpful videos🙏🏽
This is an excellent teaching video. We live in Northeast Oklahoma, USA, and are called "Green Country". We have subtropical summers with more than 70 days over 100*F this year. We also had a drought. This was an extreme summer, #10 in the top ten hottest and driest summers in our area. However, because I live in a valley, and on the edge of a creek that floods frequently, I have most of my gardens in raised beds. That meant this summer, you literally could not water enough to keep things alive. The sheer amount of transpiration from the hot and dry conditions cause most of the plants to stop growing, and definitely stopped fruiting. So, I'm going to develop some no dig, deep mulch garden beds as well. This will act as insurance against another summer like this one. I'm very inspired by your garden design. Good work. 👏
In Portugal they put poles in the ground and attach linnen fabric over it to protect plants from the sun. Light goes still through and also rain can go through it. And while you work in the garden it protects you from sunburn.
Thanks for sharing! As always very informative! Keep sharing please. I'm Portuguese and In 2 weeks we will be moving back to Portugal to a piece of land we bought. Your experience helps me a lot! 🙏
Very helpful video. My climate is like yours in Portugal. I had to shade my entire garden for over 6 months this year because the sun was so intense. Never had that problem before however it worked and now I know what is needed to grow more veggies. Cheers.
6 yrs now into no-dig raised garden beds, but you mentioning trees growing on the west side having a cooling effect: great! My neigbours on the west side chopped all their trees and bushes, add 4 hot spells during the summer and almost no rain. Had to double the amount of watering. Although the potatoe beds did not need so much, most likely because I covered them with a 4 inch (10 cm) thick layer of ornamental grasses, lets say hay.
Sir,I am not good at English but I could under stand your speech some what after going through it two three times. You are a very good teacher & a demonstatr. Pl forgive me if l am mistaken in writing. But frankly I love your speech & videos.
I love your channel and content, especially about growing in Portugal. We just bought a vacation home in central Portugal and we are starting our garden beds. The biggest challenge is language and finding supplies.
Your new location is looking good, as you've learned alot over the years! Packed with valuable information and experience. My location will be governed according as needed since, I'll be stateside longer than planned. With the extended length and I welcome to enhanced diets of so many! 😀 Nice to see all of these ways melding together to allow optimal life and healthy soils. Great work and enjoy knowing your way allows many to understand this lifestyle.
I’m a city girl, I’m finally at a place & time to learn to garden. Something I have wanted a long long time. I have been planting things for 4 years now and for one reason or another my garden has done very badly. Its very disheartening. But I will keep trying and I will finally succeed (I’m stubborn) eventually? I’m hoping to learn from you and other RU-vidrs. I’m low on funds & Im disabled & old so I have a-lot to overcome. All that said my garden has improved a bit yearly and my knowledge also has improved a bit thanks to good people like you who want to share your knowledge. Thank you in advance for ur help.
The preparation of the soil is very important. Sometimes you have to feed it for one year before it will be fertile. Mix potassium, calcium, lava powder and dried cow menuire in the soil. And plant soilfertilizing little plants for one year. Add a thick layer of compost ground. You will absolutely see the difference.
I see you're using stones in the garden. I know from experience that scorpions and centipedes like to hide in and under them. The olive groves didn't provide much protection so anywhere there was stones, cracks in concrete, etc you could find them. Mostly at night though, that makes it a bit less of an issue... I just wonder if you have thought about this? I look forward to the growing :)
I love your videos. A lot of good information in them. I live in central Texas and the climate here is very similar to Portugal where you are. Very hot and dry summers and this year with particularly little to no rainfall. We had an issue with our plants burning up in the hot summer. 40+ C. I am curious to see how you will shade your garden as it is something I realized this year that it will be a must. Also I have implemented your style of garden beds as our soil is very compacted and with a lot of clay. Also missing a lot of vital nutrients as well.
I live in Australia. We cover our veggie beds with cotton bedsheets when it is going to be 40oC. put on early in the morning and remove in the evening. works very well
Fabulous video! Thank you! We have moved to Sao Bras and were wondering where you buy your topsoil, your cardboard on a roll and your compost as well as any tools you might need in portugal… Thanks for your help. We feel very inspired by your family’s growing but we also love when you are cooking in the videos… looking forward to seeing more of you all in the future! Kind regards, heidi
Are you buying seeds, or collecting your own seeds from the strongest plants? If you are collecting your own seeds, why not set up a web shop and have an additional income? I personally prefer to buy from people I like and trust, than from a company that only focuses on profit. Cheers
Love your videos! I'm in California (similar Mediterranean climate) and am thinking of in-ground beds. But I worry about gophers and other critters. What solution do you recommend for keeping the digging animals out of the in-ground beds? Thanks!
SoCal. Gophers destroyed my entire garden in 2020! I have raised beds with screens on the bottom and the gophers just climbed into the beds and ate things. :( I use both in ground beds and raised beds. The gophers seemed to have left for now but I didn't grow anything in my garden in 2020 to starve them out. I am going to plant a lot of alliums to try and get the gophers to go someplace else and I destroy their tunnels when I find them. Good luck.
Thank you for this knowledge sharing, it is so clear and understandable and always a pleasure.. we're about to move to portugal ourselves and your input helps me a lot.. wanted to ask if those beds you did are just compost? have you done any type of work or preparation on the land before? i mean, how can you know if the local soil underneath the beds is ok for planting? what about crops with deeper roots? last , can you plant directly in compost? thank you
Great info it's a lot of information for a newbie but very helpful! I'd wish to start a garden but no land not even a small garden for me right now. Hopefully one day soon! Have you ever thought or wanted to grow a food forest? That wouldn't need maintaining after some years!
I live in a 2br apartment with a balcony so I just ordered some grow bags to grow some herbs in. you can try container gardening if it's possible for you
Please be sure to look up your local laws about homesteading. Certain sizes of your farmland might fall into agricultural and not private taxation. You can get in touble fast if you don't know your local laws. You might have to found a company too, if you want to sell your crops locally or have to provide a proof that you don't. Tax traps are the worst and suck the joy out of life faster than you can say "taxfraud". The state don't care that you "didn't know." A know a fellow who had to pay 100 000 in taxes to the state because they were "gifted" a patch of forest and they did not know that the forest came with annual taxes attatched.
Hi Moreno! Great video! Can you share where you got the compost? I am starting a farm near your area and I'm having difficulty finding someone who delivers high quality compost...
Recycling yards give it out for free to residents of the area where I live. To improve the soil I also make my own Bokashi, a form of fermented compost that is self-made from kitchen and gardening scraps and that adds beneficial microbes to the soil, so whatever nutrients are there become more available to the plants.
@@chrisgolda if you want to be certain, you can buy steamed soil from a proper nursery. I personally only had positive experiences with soil from recycling yards, you can even order what you want, with well rotted horse manure or not etc. In soil from the hard ware store, I would attest that there can be anything inside, although their soil is often very expensive, I frequently had problems with it and repotted plants often developed diseases and died.
Thanks for info but you are speaking so fast without break that it is difficult to listen to. If you slow down it will be a win-win situation. But great info thanks
Why did you leave your place in France and moved to Portugal? Aren't there good places to live sustainable in France too? Why are so many Dutch sustainability promoters moving to Portugal?
Currently using cow manure from the “kraal”, would you recommend this for growing vegetables immediately since it’s the only compost I have access to and I can’t wait for 6 months for it to break down completely.
Depends for which crops. Corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and it's relatives are all gonna do fine. But carots and onions on the other end won't like it very much.
Wrong, what you need to do is get an old sailing yacht and rebuild it for a life on the seas. If you stay on land when the SHTF hungry people will come and take everything you have, they probably will eat you and your family two. On the seas there are no hungry people, food is plentiful and when the great die off has happened you can start scavange on land and start a new life on an costal Island.
