[00:00] Today we're finally revealing the truth. Are we doing today preppers or just gardeners? So I'm here with Kevin from Epic Gardening, who, you know, to be honest, played a big influence on my gardening career.
[00:14] When I first got this place, naturally I went to YouTube to look for videos. Your stuff came up and it felt like an alternate reality where our styles were very similar, I felt.
[00:27] I was just making cooking videos. you were making garden videos so naturally I found your style of teaching and entertaining and production it just it worked for me so I learned a lot about this whole garden from you
[00:39] Kevin and I have talked over the years he's never been here so it's exciting to have you here I don't think I've ever done a garden tour on the channel so I thought it'd be fun to go around check out all the spots and just chat about it get your you know thoughts your critiques any
[00:55] knowledge, you know, any improvements, because I think we do a lot of the same things. We both have these sort of suburban homesteads, and we have a lot of the same systems of self-sufficiency. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's an amazing garden, and likewise, like when I got into Power Dough,
[01:10] I came to throw home cooks at the time, now like, I like deer. But yeah, let's take a look. I mean, we're in the raised bed garden right now. So for me, the first thing I did was this beast right here you know i got the place and the deer here are bad i knew if i was planning so much food
[01:26] investing in all of you know these crops i need a protection because the deer could they have before i had the fence they could wipe it out in one night adds a nice aesthetic to the garden i find that the boundaries are nice plus i can grow up on this trellis all around the garden so it
[01:41] totally you know it added so much almost doubled the growing space standard fence is six foot right this is the eighth. What can deer jump to like seven feet something crazy like that? They like technically like a really hungry deer could just pop right over but you know they don't. I've left
[01:58] the fence open a few times a deer has gotten in here and just wreaked havoc and it's a reminder of why I got this thing because they will like incinerate your garden. I don't have a fence style like this I have a wooden horizontal fence and so like I'll screw in fixtures and do like a
[02:15] great trellis that way but I see over here you have grapes just growing up there naturally which is really nice yeah it's just like a reminder you know if you have the fence use the fence yeah which brings us into the raised beds here here we have you know some beds I built these are cedar
[02:31] beds they've been going pretty well you know I find just having different kind of growing sectors is fun this is like the classic I would say classic raised bed because you can DIY this anyone can do it you have this cool like irrigation grid here which reminds me like how I started
[02:44] gardening which is a square foot gardening method yeah that's the idea of this right you can put like one beautiful box toy right there that's a zinnias on perfect spacing yeah i mean to me this is like a classic kitchen garden classic right here i wanted to have like one classic spa and then you
[02:58] know as you get in the garden you kind of create these different sectors yeah yeah i'm seeing a lot of like fun zones i guess you could say which brings us into this zone right here this is a new bed. We started this as a grape trellis. Just, you know, a patch of grass. It's like,
[03:13] why not grow? You can see this corn. Yeah, that guy got lunged. Yep. A little munching. We were growing grapes on it. And what we realized this season was like, why not just planted it before the grapes are developed? So we did the three sisters here and it's just kind of gone off.
[03:28] Yeah. Your sisters, you have the corn, the butternut. I'm going to not have pruners. I'm going to get, let me. Look at this guy. This guy is massive. This guy is absolutely massive. I He took a sneak peek in his root cellar. I saw much smaller ones in there.
[03:40] So we're gonna do a little harvest. Forgot this is a garden harvest as well. You take the basket. You do the honors though. This is butternut squash, nearly fully ripe. Yeah, it's pretty damn full. I will say this year we just did so much
[03:54] like ground cover of squash. Yeah, there's a ton over here. And they're just everywhere. Like, and winter squash has been such a win for us and they're so easy to grow. They're also so easy to store. Yeah.
[04:06] is think about how much food that is you know for the winter that can just sit in your pantry boom you're good to go so then we're gonna move on to the orchard so this is the orchard i put this in
[04:19] right away because obviously fruit trees take forever to grow always just a dream to grow fruit i love fruit i know you like fruit as well yeah like 30 trees maybe yours are producing well yeah but it's been maybe two years more than you yeah so it's just it's just time they say like three
[04:34] four years like that's the moment like and I feel like I'm just on the precipice but it has been tough but even just like pruning raising these trees learning about them it's so fun the structure that you've pruned these two I have to say is like really nice like a really nice sort of
[04:50] base structure on the tree you've mulched it well it's looking good and I've got some spacers here to kind of spread out give it some airflow I saved you a pear oh one of my favorite fruits Underrated fruit, I feel like. I feel like pears are often disrespected as a fruit.
[05:04] I agree. Asian pears are my favorite. We're gonna have to share that, but really it's my last pear. See if you have the rest. It's so good though. Juicy. I still love Asian pears. Better than apples by far.
[05:16] So juicy. By far. We do have apple trees. Didn't produce yet. I think it was too hot. I've got about maybe 15 trees in this area. And then on the fence line over there, more trees. I got persimmons over there I got some cherry trees over there I mean anywhere I can grow a tree that not in my like main annual garden bed I growing trees I like them being over there because you basically just reinforcing that sense line or that borderline
[05:39] but with more texture and obviously something edible, which is so nice. And you do, like, I've seen in your garden, you've got the citrus growth. I do the hedgerow. The hedgerow. Yeah, the hedgerow. That's what I find interesting about yours. Number one, you're planting stuff I can't really grow that well.
[05:52] All the stone fruits or the palm fruits like the apples, it's hard for me to grow. Citrus is easy for me to grow, but then you're planting it, I would say, in a more classical sense. Like, you're going 8 to 10 feet away, and you're going for huge, honking trees. Yeah. And I planted my citrus in a straight line, 4 feet apart, 15 varieties.
[06:07] And you see both work. They both work, yeah. And I'm cutting mine to the same height, and they're basically going to become a wall. It's the goal. And it's like, you know, it's like a six-year goal. A wall of food. A wall of food. It's an incredible wall to have. And I'm in a much more urban environment, too.
[06:19] So for me, blocking that wall means I get, like, 8 feet of privacy, and I get to feel like I'm actually in a place closer to this, surrounded by trees. I love that. That brings us into this area right here. This is classic market garden. You know, for me, I just absolutely love growing in the ground.
[06:36] If your soil can do it, putting down wood chips in the pathways, compost in the beds. Look at this. We got a soil inspection. That's really nice. This garden pumps out. This was the only place on the property they were, like, growing anything.
[06:49] Oh, so this was kind of established when you first got here? No. It was all weeds, but the soil was somewhat established underneath a lot of bulls**t. There's something about, to me, the look of a garden like this.
[07:03] When you're doing, like, I like the look of the garden beds, but I also love this classic what you would call market garden. I don't know, I like having both and also experimenting with what grows better in each.
[07:15] There's something about the symmetry, I guess, of a row farm that is very satisfying to me. I don't know what it is. maybe we're of the same mindset, like that organization. Yeah, and also just the amount of food you can produce, and that's why, you know, it works for farms.
[07:29] So I've got all types of stuff in here. I've got some potatoes, bok choy, a lot of brassicas. Like, we're growing broccoli here and cabbage. Chamomile there. Chamomile there. A bunch of big ones.
[07:42] Oh, look at these guys. It's your lucky day. This is a great little yield. Asian pear. That's for the deer. Look at this guy. Oh my god, this is the biggest watermelon I've ever grown. So have you harvested any yet this season? I have.
[07:54] You know all the tricks and tips? What do you got for me? Okay, so you got... Tell me if you think we're good here. You gotta look for the spoon leaf, which is this here, dying. Okay. Which I would say is mostly dead. Yeah. But you want this tendril ideally to be dry.
[08:06] A little bit more dry. It isn't, but that doesn't mean it's really this bad. There's another one right here. You can give it that knock too. That is not fully dry. Okay, that one is fully dry. How's the spot look on the bottom?
[08:18] really nice. Yeah it looks good. Why don't we just get into this right now? You want to bust an icebox? Yeah. Let's see if we're right. You should be on ourselves. Kevin's job is on the line of pro watermelon rightness. It really is one of the harder ones
[08:32] to figure out. It is. It is because you can't do anything but look for the external signs. I mean so far so good. So far so good. I see some red in there. There's nothing like field water. It's a sunny day. You get that spoon. You come in with that spoon.
[08:44] That looks pretty nice. Yeah, it's not like super dark, but that doesn't necessarily, could be the variety. Could be. Do you know what variety is? No idea. This looks good. You got the seeds up in here.
[08:56] I've had a lot run out. Yeah, this looks really good. Okay. I think we're, as far as texture goes, we're looking good. But these are already coming for us. Structure good. Okay. Thanks for being here. Cheers, man. Oh yeah. That's good.
[09:08] That's good. I actually like a little more firm. Because you know, sometimes you harvest it late. But it's still good. a little more firm. Because, you know, sometimes you harvest it late and it disintegrates almost. And it's so hard to find the perfect, like to me, I think it would get sweeter. If you gave it two more weeks,
[09:21] it'd get a little sweeter, but you would lose a little texture. And you got next season's watermelons right there. So hydrated. Wow. So good. We'll keep that there. Maybe some bees will get into it. We got a big pile of wood here. This, to me,
[09:33] is important to go over. It's really the foundation of my garden. This is a food forest style where I'm just bringing in dumped trees. It's free. and this is all of the mulch and then you know quickly it breaks down into soil it will mulch
[09:46] the soil but also it just absorbs water so well so i don't have any flooding here and there's just so much good water retention this is what i did um my first thing was like a truly empty lot like
[09:58] they'd scrape the sod off and then they put some like landscaper chips on not this kind of stuff yeah so like you're working with like nothing almost nothing yeah which is insane what you've been able to grow on pretty much like just a dead pad.
[10:10] Fill dirt, basically. Yeah. So I basically did this, but I have way less trees in my area. So I use a service that'll partner up with Arborist and drop them. Oh, cool. And so I probably took seven or eight of piles like this size and just spread it out.
[10:22] And then to me, the best part is like, if you know you're not going to garden in an area for a while, you just leave this pile here. And it'll break down. And it'll break down. And then the best soil in your garden is going to be under this next year. It's already breaking down here. It's been sitting here for, you know, you can see, it's been sitting here for like a month.
[10:38] Good place to grow mushrooms, too. Yeah, we have been spreading mushrooms for us. So next, we've got the high tunnel here. It's surprisingly cool in here. It's nice. Because this is one of the first parts that gets shade. Yeah. Then you get the crossbreeds coming through.
[10:50] Yeah. This has, you know, been a little over a year growing in here. Yeah. And it just completely changed everything for me I know you have your greenhouse There you go Little garden goody Yeah Yeah I have a greenhouse but mine about 8 by 10 feet You mainly what seed starting in there Seed starting I grow like a mango in there something like that
[11:08] I grow coffee in there. Nice. But yeah, seed starting is like tropical warehouse kind of stuff like that. Also aesthetically, you know, so. It's a vibe. It's a vibe. This thing is just like, the amount of food I can produce in here is just out of control.
[11:21] And also just the season extension. You're San Diego. Yeah. You don't need season extension. But in here, I've been able to extend the season by like five months. Which is crazy. Yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of like staring at the cherry. To get cherries this size and this health.
[11:35] Yeah. Like, look at the leaves. There's nothing on the leaves. These tomatoes are five months old at this point, which is crazy. You can see how we're doing. They look old. Yeah, we're using the lean method. So this whole plant has just been leaned and we chop away the old growth.
[11:49] And that's why they look so healthy. Look at this bundle here. This is just out of control. This is five months in and it's still just pumping. It's crazy to see this. This is how they're growing tomatoes commercially in indoor.
[12:03] It's like you see how they just produce the most amount. The lower leaves. If you have the setup for it, it's one of the coolest ways to grow. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. It's our first year doing it. Got a water tank back here, yeah? Yeah, water tank. We'll talk about that system now, actually.
[12:16] We'll head out of the greenhouse. One stop, actually, before that, we've definitely got some beautiful ripe figs. How long have you been growing these guys? So these have never done well until I got this greenhouse because I put them in there. I overwintered.
[12:28] And now there's just so many figs on here. You can take that. Look at that color. Figs to me, I don't know if you feel the same. They're the most alien looking fruit ever. Like they're disturbing almost to look at, but probably one of the best fruits.
[12:40] From growing them and getting like actual ripe figs, like I want more. It's kind of addicting. You know how many varieties there are? There's hundreds of varieties. I know. That's what's so addicting about it. And you can grow them in so many climates. Have you grown figs? I've got one fig.
[12:52] The yellow long neck fig, so I'm talking a fig like this big. Wow. Massive. Yeah. And it's growing at more than a quarter. I got those from the market the other day, like huge ass figs. Huge, yeah. Water, that was a distraction. We're headed over to the water system.
[13:04] This I love to see. This gets me going. I honestly got a lot of inspiration from your setups. I know you do a lot of rainwater. Yeah. Coming off the roof, thousand gallon tank. Yeah. I would like to get to the point where, yeah, that could be emptied.
[13:18] The first flush filter. Yeah. There you go. This isn't for drinking. A lot of people confuse that. You know, you'd have to filter the water. But the water coming from here is just so much better for the plants. It's why your garden loves when it rains and looks so good.
[13:31] There's no chlorine in here from the, you know, municipal water. So this funnels over to the greenhouse, goes into that blue container, feeds the whole greenhouse of water. But I would like to have the whole property, like, hooked up.
[13:43] You have a 5,000, right? I've got a 5,000. I think it's from the same company. It looks like the same style. And then I've got a 200 in the front yard. There's like a small little awning in the front. And then on my chicken coop and shed, it's connected to a 250.
[13:55] And then I got the pond, which technically captures like another thousand or two. I would say that I don't really use that for water. But you could, is the thing. I've got fish in there, right? So it's basically an aquaponic system. And that is even better than rainwater because there's some nitrogen in there and all that.
[14:09] But I just get less water than you do in my climate. That's true. It's like you kind of figure out what you need over time because this will refill. But I'm learning I need more. Well, you'll get a summer rain, won't you? You know, it will get dry in the summer, so I found I needed, like, this thing totally was used up so I could use another.
[14:26] So you get no water at all in the summer? We'll get, if we're lucky, we'll get one rain of like a quarter inch or so. But even that, it's like you're not capturing much off of that. So you need just much more. So we're filling up in the spring, and then we're dispersing throughout all the summer.
[14:40] And then basically now we're September-ish. Maybe we'll start getting rain, and we'll fill it back up. Over here, we've got standard three-bay compost system. You've got these big, nice bays. and then two other systems too. Yeah, so this is all for just garden scraps,
[14:54] any type of foliage, any plants. Over here is food scraps because this will protect from, you know, critters and these things. I've had even cheaper ones that got eaten through.
[15:07] These babies will protect nicely from whatever's going to get in. Oh, where do you get like rats come in? Yeah, rats, anything, raccoons. Gotta have that compost, you know, in the garden system. And we move on to the chickens. They know you're here.
[15:19] I know you're a daddy to... I'm a chicken father. Yeah. Less than you. I got eight now. I lost a couple, unfortunately. Yeah, that will happen. That's actually why I have this right here. This is a new addition, this net, that has changed the game.
[15:33] The hawks in this area, do you have hawks? I have them, but they don't come in on the chickens as much as I think yours might. Okay. No, these hawks are ruthless. They will take a chicken before your eyes. They're crazy.
[15:46] They just don't care. So this has completely kept them safe so they can still forage. It'll take you all to the tour. So do they come up in this or are they getting to this level? Oh yeah, so no, they're not eating from here.
[15:59] I've been fermenting seeds. I did a short on that. I'll give them a scoop. So how do you do it? What are you doing to ferment? It's just adding, oh, she got hungry. I just splashed her. The fermented seed is just adding water to the seed because the sugar's in the grain.
[16:15] the sugars get released and they start fermenting. Yeah. I haven't messed around with this method yet. I should try it. Yeah, it's great. It makes the food go further. We've got the continuous rainwater circulation system here. That was a huge build.
[16:27] Saves me a lot of time Never have And that heats up in the winter too so it doesn freeze the pie strides We got an egg over here maybe Yeah let see Oh we got a lot of eggs There you go Three Is there another over there Yeah. Look at that.
[16:39] Do you have any of the fun colors? I don't have any that do that. You don't have... Do you have all white? No, it's brown and white, but I don't have an Easter egg or so. I've specifically... I've chosen the breeds over the years to give me... Multi-color. Multi-color.
[16:51] Multi-color. Multi-color. Multi-color. Multi-color. Multi-color. Multi-color. Which I just find is like one of the best parts about rape. I did the exact opposite. I chose them for the look of the hen. I wanted crazy looking hens, but I didn't care about the egg, and you went the opposite. It's all around. Yeah, yeah. I think it's like, where else can you get multicolored eggs?
[17:03] I think it might crack, but we'll see how it goes. This sort of rounds out the outdoor section. This is a little perennial bed. You know, it's not really flowering too much right now because obviously we are in September.
[17:15] But this thing pumps, you know, and brings in so much pollination. It's just a new grain. Yeah. It's really nice. I know you're a big flower guy, which I appreciate. I'm becoming one, for sure. You've got the rose trellises. I grow a bunch of wildflower mixes.
[17:28] I'll do something kind of like this, but in an in-ground bed, kind of near the edible garden. And I'll do it as a border planting. I'll just sprinkle a mix and just let whatever comes come. So not so much perennials, but one day. One day, yeah. And yeah, we'll head inside.
[17:40] That's an epic fix, though. I see a product I recognize here. Roots are looking good on these. These are ready. Yeah, I mean, I've had these for years. I don't know why you would have any other type of like plastic shitty ones because they just you can reuse them.
[17:54] They're cranked, yeah. These are ready to go out. We've got brassicas, cilantro, fennel. That'll be really nice. All right, we'll go inside. This is where the real magic happens here. Yeah. Let's go downstairs. We've got a very important room.
[18:07] This is maybe my favorite thing I've seen so far. This is like I dream of a room like this. This is, you know, we only see gardening on your channel, but obviously it's all got to go somewhere. We're in the fermentation cellar.
[18:19] And to be honest, this is really one of the first years we've been able to start filling this thing. Oh, look at these. It's like I built it four years ago with the plan that one day it would be filled. You're growing through it literally.
[18:31] And it's like it's gardening, you know, it takes time to get it right, to increase your harvest. But every year I feel like you just get better and better. These are nice. Yeah, these are really nice. And we're, you know, we're storing onions and potatoes and a lot of squash.
[18:46] and then canned goods. Canning that summer, you know, that summer. Yeah, pickles like spears, spices. And then fermentation. I got beer and miso and like all types of, you know, everyone's seen.
[18:58] Oh, you got some mead going. Yeah, we got some mead brewing. We'll have to take one of these for the rest of your journey. My journey out here, yeah, spraying the mead on the way home. Actually, we got to check this out. This is great. We've got an entire,
[19:10] this would be a cold fermentation room. Fermentation fridge, I'd call it. So this is all lacto-fermented. So that was canned. So that's like shelf-stable. So that's miso.
[19:22] Yeah, so that just goes for years. We've got sauerkraut. We've got pickles. Guanciale. Love the preservation. Yeah, this is like the next era on the channel. It's getting deeper into this side of the channel.
[19:34] Yeah, because this to me is like, this is the stuff that's really hard to obtain. High quality stuff without having, you know, growing your own fruit. Where are you getting it, right? Where are you getting watermelon rinds? Yeah. This stuff to me.
[19:46] is the most expensive. Like that's why if you can make it at home you really can save a lot of money because it's just so expensive to get good preserved. And it's not that hard to make. You understand the science and innovation right? Oh yeah. We've got you know chimichurri things from
[20:03] the summer we're preserving. Kale, not packaged well. Frozen kale. Corn chowder. Lamb juice. Lamb Lamb juice. That was from a video. Lamb juice.
[20:15] A lot of summer preservation. Yeah, yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah, that's the idea of self-sufficiency, you know, just growing and preserving. If I'm telling someone about what I'm doing and they don't quite get it, they're like, oh, I know where it'll go if things go down.
[20:29] Like, they think it's like a doomsday prepper type thing. Yeah, yeah, all the time. That's not the self-sufficiency that I'm after. It is just more like the feeling of, like, I can be self-sufficient. I'm interested to hear if there's, you know, any doomsday.
[20:42] All the time. Or especially, you know, when the pandemic started. Yeah. I was growing quite a bit at that time. I'm coming over. I'm doing this. I'm like, look, like the type of self-sufficiency you and I are approaching this as is like I can grow and eat healthy things that I want and I can transform them into different preserves
[20:58] and ferments and stuff for many years. And I don't have to worry so much about being reliant. But like if really it did hit the fan. I'd be better off than most. I'd be better off than most, but I'm still struggling. you know it's not like I'm out in the rural sticks on 58 acres like a freezer full of cow
[21:13] or something yeah it depends on how much to hit the fan yeah yeah it didn't moderately hit like kind of in COVID yeah COVID was a you know I tried this I said how could I live off my garden yeah if I really had to 2019 and this is my old place with a small garden I just grew like 120
[21:29] pounds of potatoes and then I ate those for a month and it like it worked yeah so it's like possible. But you wouldn't really like that very much. Well, yeah, man. We're just doomsday preppers when it really comes down to it.
[21:41] Yeah, we've now pivoted the concept. We're both preppers. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for coming over. Thanks, man. Super fun to finally have you after, you know, all of the inspiration you've provided me with the garden. Likewise. And I'm excited to
[21:53] see how our paths continue to cross. You know, we're both growing and cooking. More class, I would say. Follow this matter. You have not yet. Thank you.