How to Make a NEW Vegetable Garden in Your Backyard!

How do you turn your backyard into a bountiful vegetable garden to feed your family? We'll explain several techniques to get started growing your own food.

#hosstools
#growyourownfood
#backyardgarden
#vegetablegarden

Check out our other pages:

[beatricebrown]

I love your videos and especially this one because I shared it with my kids (who weren't paying attention when I gardened when they were kids). Now, that I am a retired old lady and live in a rural area that is on a mountain ridge, I cannot til this rocky (and I mean ROCKY) soil! So, I've resorted to raised beds and container (100 gallon water troughs) gardening. This is perfect for me and might be for others who are similarly situated. The galvanized troughs are not cheap, but they last and you can create the perfect soil conditions for dedicated crops. They don't take up a lot of space and can be added yearly (easier on the budget). Don't forget that people can grown potatoes in large containers, too. Never underestimate the power of a 5-gallon bucket. I grow scallions, basil, carrots, radishes and beet greens in them. They are easy to maintain, and move around if you need to and not too heavy to lift. I maintained a 3-season garden when my kids were little and I would freeze or can the harvest, slaughter one cow for a year's worth of beef protein. That was a long time ago. Now, though I am older and not as strong, I think there are other retired people who have a need to know how to garden in these uncertain times. Again, thanks.

[LowcountryGardener]

Alright, alright, alright, I'm so happy to see you are willing to expand your gardening expertise to all areas including to us that don't have acres to grow on. There are way more of us urban gardeners watching than you think.

[carolavant]

Lordy, do I ever have that very situation. I closed on my new house this morning, but won't be moved up here until mid-January. I spent this afternoon walking the property and looking for stumps and possible wet spots and made notes of where the pecan tree roots are. Either right before or right after I move I'll be getting a silage tarp and begin preparing my first garden plot and starting transplants. Let the merriment commence!

[chrisphelps]

Great info Travis. Please do some more like this.

[donskin]

In ground gardens get harder for me as I get older so for the last 3 years I've been doing hydroponics in a 20 x 24 greenhouse. We also have 30 wicking tubs made from barrels. The wicking tubs are a great way to garden.

[peggyhelblingsgardenwhatyo]

Good morning, Thanks for your tutorial. I've been Gardening for 50 years and I learn more by listening to you. You have a very straightforward approach. Merry Christmas and Happy Gardening 🎅🍅🤶

[gilbertranch]

Had the husband build me a chicken tractor out of PVC and bird netting. Chickens do all the tilling plus fertilizing. Move the tractor over and tarp the worked up ground. Love all of your videos.

[texgal]

I got a 20x20 community garden plot this year, the biggest area I have ever tried to garden and I had learned about the silage tarp from watching your videos. The plot was full of dandelions and johnson grass and I dont have a tiller. After mowing and scalping I put the silage tarp down a full 10 weeks and it was amazing how it cleared the plot. I don't think I would have been able to garden that plot without having done that first. I'm a firm believer in the tarping now. It is by far the easiest way to prep ground.

[brentkellis]

This is a great video, Travis. You include excellent suggestions for beginners and those who more experienced. The best preparation for gardening is mental. I worked in a garden nursery in Mesa, Arizona while in school and saw a lot of people come in on a nice Spring day (which is around April here) anxious to turn their established bermudagrass lawn into a lush, productive garden. I always wondered what their garden looked like in the middle of July with its 115-degree daytime temperatures after probably weeks of no cultivating or weeding. One who is mentally prepared for your method of regular light surface cultivation to keep the weeds down and the plants happy will be most successful. To borrow from the Suzuki violin teaching method rule for practicing: you don't have to weed your garden every week, just on those weeks you eat and sleep. Your gardening methods, tools, and videos are very inspiring to all of us gardeners, both the Saturday morning variety as well as the live-off-the-land types.

[charlastar]

Stay small unless you want to prep for coming hard times and likely food scarcity. Big gardens take constant work. Growing up in South Georgia not far from Travis, my family had a 2 acre garden on our farm. My mother canned a huge pantry full of food and had 2 freezers. Meat from the farm was at the freezers at the slaughterhouse.

[dewainkoester]

Tilling ahead of a hard freeze will kill a majority of those summer grasses. Do this a few times during the winter and there will be way less to deal with before growing season. Its general maintenance afterward. After you till, bring in the compost to help replace the organic matter you lost from tilling.

[Chris-opyt]

I dont know why so many people push raised edged beds, and I too fell for it. It's expensive, lots of work, and eventually rots. The so called good soil you make on top from composts and many other amendments, becomes really fine stuff that doesnt hold water or let it thru. With all the additional watering needed being raised, the soil collapses even more. I often found at the end of the season that only 6 inches was moist and dry as bone underneath. I got rid of the raised beds and find garden rows so much easier to work with. Everything is hard with boxes, cant even use any tools apart from a little hand shovel. Setting up supports, harder in boxes. Watering, much longer and often runs down side and still not moist. I'm now producing much more food and can plant follow up crops without being darned boxed in.

This is my experience, here in a dry summer climate. Of course if you really need it, because you're on rock or on a sodden mess, it may be the way to go. But I would say, unless you really need it, avoid that large expense and buy some tools etc instead. It's all aesthetics and a pain and helps to ruin crops. It's not even more ergonomic, as they taut about, as you have to bend and reach by hand into a 4 foot deep space.
If you must have edged raised beds, consider lining the insides with food grade long lasting plastic. All that watering rots it in a few years otherwise. Wood costs a pretty penny and the safe treated wood rots.

[jjyemg]

Travis-Great Info as always!!! I've gardened for 32 years in 4 northeastern states(NY/PA/NJ/DE). For your edification the common lawn grasses up in the northeast are Fescue/Kentucky Bluegrass/Rye. Mixtures of all 3 are very commonly sold as some grow better in shady areas than others. The grass that can spread and grow underneath and into your garden is called Quack/Crack grass. It's brutal as it will spread underground without sunlight and pop up everywhere. I bet you have quack grass in GA.

[joemartin]

I started my first garden back when I started having youngins...been 15 years now..I started with a 10 by 20 and figured out real fast how tuff it is to keep weeds out ..now that I'm seasoned up good, I've learned that if you use cover crops in the off season and plant your veggies good n tight, the weeds dont have a chance to establish....my garden now is around 100 by 100 if you add up all 3 plots....I take care of ALL of it myself, by hand.. ..though I get plenty of help eating it raised 4 kids, supplying most of their food needs with my gardening, so its definitely worth it...😄Happy Gardening

[theloosemonkeybackyardgard]

I have had 1/2 acre ground gardens and now I have all raised beds and 5 gallon and 20 gallon containers. I miss the space of the large ground garden and being able to grow corn and long rows of pole beans, limas and peas, but found myself giving most of it away. It was even hard to get folks to come pick it for free.
We still have our acreage south of town but moved back in town years ago. I have found out that raised beds and container gardening can be quite rewarding. I am going to try pole beans in a couple raised beds this spring to see if it’s worth the effort. I currently grow tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers (sweet and hot), cucumbers, okra, turnips, collards, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, beets and onions. I have 6 raised beds 3’ X 6’ X 1’ deep and eight 20 gallon containers in a 22’ x 24’ fenced in area within my backyard. So my point is you can still grow a lot of vegetables in raised beds and containers. Weed control is much better with beds and you can get more plants per space, but I do miss my corn 🌽.

[JHKProduce]

If you don’t have a tiller....I would highly recommend renting one. One time a year expense and well worth it.

[melaniestallings]

Wonderful! Thanks for answering my (and many other’s) question on how to get started. Exactly what I needed.

[yourscooter]

Thank you for the information! I watch all your videos and I'm living through your great weather.

[outsidewithjeff]

I only have hand tools so my technique
1 mow the area on the lowest setting
2 weed eater it to scalp the grass to ground or soil level
3 dig down 1 shovel depth and flip over to allow remaining grass to die from lack of sunlight
4 water lightly to promote weed germination then wait 5 days
5 after the 5 days have passed I come through and hoe the surface to disturb and germinated seeds. Water and wait 5 days.
We are now on day 10-11 at this point I hoe and rake again until soil is workable and I’ll add compost and then I am ready to plant.

I hope this is helpful to someone without a tiller and is able to do the manual labor.

My garden area consists of 2 large 4x32 raise beds a 8x40 in ground as well as a 18 inch strip of garden space all along my fence.

[dewainkoester]

I'm glad your garden has bounced back! Looks nice.