When my neighbors asked what my secret was for having a lush yard and garden. I explained that what they saw was the result of my gardening by attrition. If it can't take care of itself, it doesn't get replanted and might even get pulled out. The robust survivors became the permanent residents.
That's one of the secrets to human survival is to always acquire things that can pretty much survive on its own, be it herbal, medicine plants, flowers or animal. Just try to have something that keeps on giving 💯
Here’s a tip: paint your garden tool handles to lengthen their time outdoors. Choose a bright paint like red or prange so you can find them in a sea of green. If anything burns me , it’s green garden tools.
Re: tool pile! Mineral oil plus sand in a tub makes for sharp and rust free tools. They are also very satisfying to pull back out again.. bit Excalibur-esk, (except extremely easy to pull out.) I learned that from an 80+ year old fellow lazy gardener who struggled to remember ever sharpening any of the tools in at least the last 30 years, yet they all had a good edge.
Rust free? Yes. Sharp? Certainly not if the edge is exposed. Grinding those nice sharp edges against a thousand tiny rocks will dull them very quickly.
Anne I’m not sure if you will read this, but I just want to say the biggest heartfelt THANKYOU… I’ve been really struggling today with my mood & mental health, I’ve been snapping uncontrollably at my hubby and son, and I felt like none of my usual tools were working. I got so frustrated trying to listen to a guided meditation whilst mixing horse feeds (which usually helps) that I swore profusely, and came to RU-vid to find something to listen to. Your video popped up and your SOH and keeping it real has just brightened my day no end. Thank you so much for the walk around, the awesome insights and suggestions, the humour and for just being you. Still laughing at the chilli story… your poor long suffering hubby Adam following you around is like my hubby Adam… totally awesome xxx
Hey Anne, I live At 6000 ft in the mountains and only have a short growing season from 1 June to maybe the end of August I have a lot of GRASS CLIPPINGS -Is it OK to put GRASS CLIPPINGS directly right around and on the paths where your fruits and vegetables are being Grown ? And how deep is too deep of a layer ? At the end of my growing season, I also add all of the mulched leaves and GRASS CLIPPINGS to entire garden after growing season is frozen out, over and done? thanks appreciate your knowledge
I love her energy and her character towards he r animals 😊 makes me smile just watching her talk mess to her donkey and pig which actually listen to her , really shows how much they trust her.
( For our garden tools ) we cover the wood handles with marine grade heavy walled - adhesive lined - heat shrink tubing. Last forever - great grip - no splinters.
I have so many garden tools scattered about my 5 acres, in the weather, that when I finally brought them all 'home", I didn't have storage space. All the wood handles are very weathered, so maybe (cost?) my favorites will get treated to new covers?
@@joelnowland2196 I picked up some 1" red and black at a garage sale, about 3 feet in length, but never considered them as tool handle covers. Thanks. Considering they shrink 2 or 3 -> 1, I was considering 1 1/2" or 2", but maybe I can buy 3 feet at a local electrical supply shop and give it a try before buying the 100 foot roll.
Not canning is such an important tip for lazy gardeners/homesteaders. Dealing with abundance is the most labor-intensive part of gardening. Potatoes, onions, and garlic are so much easier to store when growing extra. The only thing I can are tomatoes because they are so valuable.
Awesome info!! Agreed, letting your perennials go to seed is so important to keep the garden improving, feeding pollinators and save yourself from purchasing new replacements. Plus it's so fun to realize that the daughters and sons of the plants you originally planted are still thriving! We've had cucumbers, squashes, asparagus, sunflowers, wildflowers, grains, etc growing for more than 10 years without buying anything!
Hi new Gardener here!🙂 Any advice for me, for beginners? I just started yesterday with making my first bed🎉I planted carrots and peppers so far and I'm going to finish today making another bed for all my other seeds🙂 and good tips for me?
@@myresthomaslababy5765 Tip... Don't let the soil dry out until the seeds sprout. & Keep an eye on them after they sprout to make sure they are getting enough water.
I rented a house for 4 years. The yard was riddled with many “weeds”. I let the grass go to seed every year. My neighbors sometimes complained about the tall grass to the landlord. I explained what I was doing and told them that when I left they would have a much greener yard. When I left the landlord thanked me for “improving the property”. All with no cost to me or the landlord. Side benefit, I only had to mow twice a year. 😂
I rented a house for 4 years. The yard was riddled with many “weeds”. I let the grass go to seed every year. My neighbors sometimes complained about the tall grass to the landlord. I explained what I was doing and told them that when I left they would have a much greener yard. When I left the landlord thanked me for “improving the property”. All with no cost to me or the landlord. Side benefit, I only had to mow twice a year. 😂
Amaranth is actually super delicious if you sautee it just like regular spinach. South Asians grow up eating that as a staple spinach. It's an easy way to get spinach in the hot summer. There's a reason all the animals love it! I have short video about it on my channel ;)
In the 6 years that we lived in our Dublin apartment, I totally changed the health, welfare and vitality of my garden soil with nothing but woodchips. It became the vehicle for us creating relationships with our neighbours because we all started talking garden, sharing ideas and enjoying the visiting birds. And best of all, I had no idea what I was doing!! I had put it down for aesthetic reasons and to prevent excessive water loss through evaporation (yes, even in Ireland) and in return, I received the most unbelievable soil (it was utter rubbish before) with a garden that ended up being almost as lush in winter as in summer (still can't believe that) AND it totally took care of my overwhelming bindweed, blackberry and horsetail weed problems that had choked out literally everything before. It's Ireland, so the most effective treatment for garden issues is for you to drown your frustrations in Guinness (I'm not really exaggerating), and I was told that I'd have to get a professional in to spray it and then maybe that may control it for a bit while killing everything else.. From my first year living there and spending absolute hours pulling off bindweed from my flowerstems with tweezers and nail scissors like a horticultural surgery, to the token snip and clip of an errant weedling like the genteel woman that my mam wished I could have been, I can only and forever attribute it to wood chips. I am still in awe at the power of nature's lego.
Your cadence and intellect has somehow wrestled my ADHD into submission- literally watched this whole thing, never would have thought it possible for me 🤯🤯🤯
thank you, first time watching. i am a senior. i started gardening from about seven. my garden is my best friend. i live in zone 5 and it get very cold but i do very good. i am alone don't need all the food i grow. but i can't help myself.i learn a lot today, keep up the good job.
OMG! I had the same explosive experience with my Kombucha! Luckily no one was in the room when the chain reaction (2 growlers and 2 secondary primary ferments) went off. I was pulling shards of glass from all over the room for years. Not to mention the watermelon I had added off the ceiling and walls of our forty foot family room. It looked like a grizzly murder scene. I can't believe I've found a gardener almost as lazy as me. Every year the family wonders at the marvel that we call the jungle. You rock!
14:28 so true! People are always asking "what is the easiest thing to grow" but you shpulf really focus on learning h0e to grow things you ENJOY eating... because no matter how many things you successfully grow- it's not going to be satisfying if it's a good you dislike!
I’ve never laughed so hard during a RU-vid video. Your personality is unapologetically unfiltered and amazing. So helpful and informative. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to you speak about your garden. ❤
🎉 Thank God I finally found another person who wants to garden naturally like me. You my lovely lady or as rare as a southern eclipse during Northern lights and definitely a breath of fresh air to my old tired grumpy eyeballs.
When you got to the hops in your garden it reminded me of my mother telling me about my cob pipe-smoking grandmother who used hops as a starter for her bread. She also gardened by the phases of the moon and had a tremendous garden. P.S. The success of your garden is the fact that you are feeding the biology in the soil through your practices. "It's All About The Biology".
I always recommend looking at native plants for a lot of your greens the flavours they have plus the benefits they provide your local ecosystem are amazing
Just found this channel and I can't believe I've been missing out on this!!!! Also the fact that you had the exact hand motions for your donkey's sounds at 16:10 is incredible hahaha like you literally didn't miss a beat on that one
I love your approach to failure. It seems so freeing! And definitely seems to allow you to be more creative and experiment more. Biggest thing I am learning from discovering your videos right now
I have heard its better to give a good soak once a week than every day it will just not soak down and then evaporate in the heat. Whenever I water it usually rains the next day and in drought when it doesnt rain fir ages I water but the water doesn't make anything grow just keeps it alive then the rain comes and overnight everything doubles. Rain seems to have some magical quality which water just doesn't have!!
@@Padraigpnegative ions, no chlorine and none of the other residual chemicals in tapwater! My garden started doing so so much better when I stopped using a hose and only water from my rain barrels. 🌸
So glad to happen upon this video and your channel! I am always telling people who ask about my garden (some success some not) that my approach tends to be Darwinistic but now I know it’s a combination of Darwinistic & lazy gardener! For example, I actually bought a dwarf cherry tree (I like to start with cuttings or forage a lot but clearance sales are also nice) then never got around to planting. Year 3 and it was starting to bear fruit. I felt guilty it’s still in the nursery pot so moved to actually plant it (I mean, it’s doing its thing despite me, the least I can do now is give it a better foundation) and found it rooted itself well below the nursery pot and into the garden bed. It found the good soil left over from my watermelon patch I set it on and made itself happy. Needless to say, this fall I have to move it but I will do so carefully b/c that little bugger has earned it’s place. 😂
I’m so happy I found you!!! Might be moving to TN soon myself. And harvesting the dead leaves from the plant around the wild blueberries so the micro nutrients can aid in the transplanting is sooo incredibly smart!!!!! Also as an person with adhd your way of gardening is so appealing lol
So glad you didn't waste time watering or weeding, but went on vacay. You are even more zany and fun, idk how that's possible. I have to remember to steal the leaves and soil around any specimens I steal from natural settings; Anne told me to do it! LOL. Thanks for another fun video. I can't believe you chomped down on that hot pepper.....
Awesome garden tour. Tips from obvious time in the trenches. Plus stories along the way that were personal & inspiring. This is the first video I've watched & it gained my subscription.
Thank you for such an entertaining tour of your garden, absolutely gorgeous. I'm working toward doing the same. We in spring now, here in South Africa, my 2nd season on this property, and last years grafted fruit trees are all blooming and planted out. We ate from our garden all year even through winter, and helped four families with food throughout the year. This year is going to be epic as I've concentrated on soil health and making compost. Your insight has helped so much, thank you again for sharing your knowledge❤
I planted 2 muncher burpless cucumbers 🥒 and was OVERLOADED with cucumbers all season! I pickled a bunch of national pickling cucumbers as well. Point being if you keep picking your cucumbers they'll keep going all summer long. You can't let a single cucumber fully ripen though.
Cucumbers and okra and some other plants will grow year around as long as you keep it from freezing and you provide nutrients and water light and heat you can grow and harvest year-around
A large sized dead toaster oven spray painted, and placed on a concrete block is great for storing all your hand tools right in the garden, nice and dry
Love it! I moved to NE Alabama 3 years ago. Yes, growing here's different for sure. I love being able to grow watermelons. My biggest problem is when the Japanese beetles come. They decimate the leaves on the fruit trees, berries, and green beans. Your farm is so much further along. Wish you and David the Good could get together for a video.
@@KHomesteaddo you guys have orb weaver spiders there? And tarantulas. I hate spiders but I let them live rent free on the garden. Any time I see a tarantula in the field I scoop them up and place them in the garden.
You are simply adorable, smart, entertaining, and I'm so jealous that you moved from northwestern Washington to Tennessee... I'm in Tacoma and yearning for a better place ❤ Keep up the great work!
Wow.... My brain is busting... Thanks for feeding me what I need to know and wetting my thirst for more simple ways to accomplish life around me... I'm older and have physical limitations, so being encouraged to do things in imitation of what is there already is huge... I'm humbled and so grateful... And more hopeful
Anne you are an absolute delight!! I found it totally wild when you said you just get your blueberries for free, from the forest! But i am from the bottom of temperate Australia, where nothing is native!! Very jealous of how many beautiful plants thrive where you are, enjoy being a better lazy gardener
We do have some wonderful native plants that get overlooked!! I think many of us just aren’t aware of what we have and don’t know how to use it thanks to the way colonisation happened in our country
@@EmL-kg5gnI'm in NZ and we genuinely have no native fruits or veggies. Because humans arrived here so late compared to the rest of the world very few things are fit for consumption, edible stuff was brought in first by Maoris 700 years ago then Europeans 400 years ago. There were a few native plants and berries Maoris ate but they were usually poisonous if prepared incorrectly.
@@defenestrator3900 Oh that’s so interesting!! It always amazes me that people were able to figure out how to correctly prepare potentially poisonous foods
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Interrupted by donkey : Adam and the pepper/cream blame game : soil nerd time (i'm the same but with only a tiny terraced house garden in a Nortern English city) : Kevin Bacon vs the chickens for leftovers... loved it all... stunned by the sheer vivacity and enthusiasm❤
G’day from Australia, just stumbled on your videos. Love your personality and enthusiasm. Your gardening style is awesome and makes sense work smarter not harder. New subscriber
Beginning gardeners in more arid environments, you will need to set up drip irrigation to achieve Ann’s amazing lazy garden! Rain helps Ann achieve the laziness!
You’re totally right- at the very beginning, but as you build up your soil, you’ll need it less and less, last year we had a 90 day drought paired with one heck of a heatwave and still needed zero water
@@AnneofAllTrades honestly, as someone who lives in a part of california with 7 inches of rain/year, i can tell you that a 90 day drought in a place that gets 50 inches of rain/year is not the same. your plants/trees can search out moisture and find it. mine really can't. the crazy rain we recently got left the ground moist for days. i would say more than a week after the tropical storm, parts of the ground still have moisture. rain is a luxury that can make gardening sheer joy.
@@orangemoonglows2692 I won’t disagree there, but will add that the more you can build up your soil, the less water you’ll need, no matter where you live.
I live in Tennessee as well.. I’m on just my 3rd year gardening with triple what I started with my first year..I am so glad I came across your channel.. you taught me a few things I had no clue about that is naturally growing in my garden. Love it!
Since you are new to Tennessee I thought I would share a little good news for you if you like thornless raspberries and blackberries to get the best results grow them in a tree greenhouse or in a underground greenhouse that you can roll the cover up and then recover by the touch of a switch for a crank put you a small wooden heater in your greenhouse to provide heat if needed will also help provide a better and longer harvesting
👌 totally with you on keeping the tools out! I don't have much spare time, so I like to keep mine out. My husband hates it but I'm like I am running a farm/business, RU-vid channel, & working full time!?! I need to take some shortcuts now & then! 😂
I finally convinced my husband that just leaving a garden fork out by the compost - where we actually need to use it - was more efficient than having to trek back up to the shed to retrieve it. We'll replace it in 5 years but the compost will get turned.
So happy to come across your channel! We moved to the northern section of the Cumberland Plateau in TN 2.5 years ago and love it here but also struggling to get my fruit trees and blueberries going. Looking forward to learning from you. Thanks so much for all the great tips.
Thanks Anne. I am trying really hard to do exactly what you are doing and with whatever time I can come up with to do it, going from city girl to country with zero farming experience and a lot of permaculture dreams. I have subscribed.
I love this video, I've saved and shared it... my only thing i would like to add is if you don't have much space, but still have a chicken run, add everything you would normally compost into your chicken run. Chickens are pretty good about knowing what they can and cannot eat so when your (properly fed) chickens are introduced to a world of composting opportunities your not just making your chickens happy but your encouraging healthier produce from them as well. Decomposing materials are a hotspot for insect life so what your chickens aren't digesting just breaks down into the soil that you can use to enhance your unique ecosystem ❤❤
Why not have a small tool shed at the garden? For the skeeters at night, you could make a little pond for dragonflies. I have a lot of dragonflies and few skeeters. I'm doing Mexican Gherkins next year, I cannot wait. Awesome garden!
@@dunedainmom there are a bunch of videos on YT for dragonfly ponds. I'm using a small koi pond shell, not a liner. And I buy my plants from a local nursery. The dragonflies show up on their own. I have lakes and stream in my area so I normally have a few around anyway. I'm not sure why but I find a lot of adults in my blackberries and raspberries.
Hi Anne, DIY home fertilizers are honestly the way to go if you are running a large scale garden (or if you are on a tight budget likes most home gardeners). Have you heard about JADAM organic gardening? I have a bucket sitting for over a year that will continue to feed my garden. Don’t forget to dilute with water and test a few plants before watering your entire garden (we haven’t had any issues so far). Happy gardening!🎉-Dave
So wonderful! I would love to learn how to get to this point from scratch. It’s so overwhelming to get from plain grass and unamended soil to garden without spending a ton of money on raised beds or compost or mulch. I’m thinking plant a bunch of cover crops and chop and drop or till them in? I started out with fruit trees because you can just plop ‘em in and in a few years you get fruit, and I love fruit.
If I were starting from scratch (which I did in this space just 3 years ago), I’d walk out and cover the grass with a few layers of cardboard or a tarp until late winter, at which point I’d start forming my garden beds and pathways and keep any bare soil covered with cardboard and/or thick layers of woodchips till spring when I was ready to plant.
I'd use the cardboard, you can water it in, put some bricks on it, and it'll kill the grass and bring worms. Get chips from local tree companies if you can, put the chips on the cardboard. Plant through the cardboard by cutting if necessary. In a few years, it'll all be beautiful dirt. We did 4 layers of cardboard and 4" of chips 6 years ago and just layered more cardboard and chips because it's all beautiful dirt now. If you use a tarp, you'll have to pick it up, ans most of the time, they get destroyed by the weather and you'll be picking up micro plastics for years. Happy gardening!!
Just had to hear the donkey one more time this morning. I have to confess I laid in bed still laughing about it the night before. That said...love the lazy gardener concept to the point that my target crops are edible flowers and weeds along with herbs. Please point me to anything on your channel that talks about this - thank you in advance. Am I the laziest gardener here? just sayin....
Dear Anne, INVU. You are living MY dream. I am simply in love with your garden and your practices to focus on the invisible part of the plant. And, I wish I had so much space as you have. Your video is super informative. These are the same principles I have been trying to tell my wife and she doesn't listen. Don't pick up the leaves they will amend the soil. Use holes to put your scraps or fertilizers to raise the soil quality. And most importantly, no need to try to babysit or revive the smaller vegetable plants if they cannot survive on their own. Anyway, I have my own fruit trees "orchard" in a small thousand plus square feet front yard. Putting up raised beds in a couple of days for milkweed - to attract butterflies. Also, a Manuka honey plant is in works - would be planted in next couple of years in the soil - to attract honey bees - a tons of honey bees - my little pollinators. I also have planted a flower bulbs patch that would come up seasonally. I have planted tuberose, stargazer lilies, dinnerplate dahlias, hyacinths, paperwhites, cyclamen and tulips. I like the fragrant varieties more. The hyacinth I had to re-plant because they were not seasonally spacing well with the paperwhites and tulips - which is when I noticed the smaller new hyacinth bulbs growing out of the original ones. It's such a happy feeling to see healthy growth under your care. But as you said, it's about maintaining a sustaining plantation - So, I am going to work on that. Next week - I am planning to clean up my side yard and put up raised beds there too. Many of your suggestions I am going to consider while I do my round of planting over there. Whatever I do, it would not even be close to what you have done ! So, once again, INVU - in a good appreciative way. Regards.
*Anne, that is awesome that you have made your garden work for you.... and so much less work to do too... it's about the planning of where to plant stuff aye.*
I just found this video and your page and i am IN LOVE!!! Gives me so much confidence. This is the exact mindset I have toward gardening and your explinations and visuals are SO HELPFUL!! Plus my name is Anne, too! 🥰
I really appreciate your tour! I've been using wood chips for about two years. I cannot recommend them enough. Seeing how you use them is a game changer for me. I've previously avoided getting them on my beds. They've just been on the paths. I'm changing it up with the next drop. I live in Arizona, zone 9b, and the water situation concerns me quite a bit. I want to do everything I can to keep moisture in the soil for my plants. I've been reading Ruth Stout's books and looking for ways to let my garden thrive with less work. I have other things I want to do. Letting the garden do its thing. Cheers!
Amaranth is one of my primary pest weeds here in Hawaii. It serves mostly as scaffolding for the bleeping vines.. leave the amaranth and soon all you have is mounds of vines.