Self Sufficiency on Small Acreage – My Vegetable Garden Layout

Self Sufficiency on small acreage starts with a garden and its production. You can’t have a homestead without a garden. This is my vegetable garden layout and how I get the most out of it. Along with the layout of my garden there is lots of organic gardening tips to get the most out of small space, how to keep the garden production and soil health in the garden and something I do for pest control. NOTE: While this garden is where I grow the largest amount of our vegetables, I also have several other smaller raised beds scattered around the property to help supply food for self sufficiency, plus many flower bed house eggplants, peppers and greens. 🙂 Video for the near future!

Want to learn more about gardening? Check our websites blog out for more information on gardening, pest management, weed control, disease control and other organic gardening methods.

Our Website:
alisorganics.com

Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/AlisOrganics/

Mailing Address:
760 Red Rock Road
St. George, Utah 84770

Our etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/HandCraftFromTheFarm

I also write a blog geared for our zone 8, which I would love to write more often, but life is busy! however, you may find some good resources here.
http://outstanding-in-the-garden.com

Our CSA, where we provide food for families on a weekly basis and we also donate a portion of our produce to Elders or Someone in need in our community to provide healthy fresh organic veggies.
https://desertsagecsa.com
00:00 Ali’s Garden Tour
00:35 Raised Garden Beds
01:04 No Till Gardening
01:38 Garden Size & Beds
02:33 Planting Around the Perimeter
03:30 Perennial Vegetables & Herbs
04:00 Duck Run & Pest Control
05:02 Keeping up Soil Health
05:50 Intensive Planting & Intercropping
06:45 Growing Vertical
07:02 Microclimates in the Garden
07:20 Growing Season & Extending
08:18 No Bare Soil
08:37 Keep Planting

Welcome to my garden where I grow the largest portion of our food that keeps us from relying on the grocery store and being more self-sufficient it’s winter time and this is the best time to see the Bare Bones of my garden I’ll walk you through

My layout what I do to get the most out of my garden space what I would do different if I had it to do all over again this is the most asked for video and I hope you enjoy it I’ve been gardening in this space for well over 25

Years now and when I first started it was full of bindweed thistle crab grass and Ragweed the clay soil had no life to it and it was hard as a rock I used the old traditional watered down the rose method then a few years later I adapted

To the raised wide row gardening and then I also used the drip tape irrigation system which I still use today I love those raised rows so I decided to make them more permanent with some 8 by8 in Old Timbers that I got for a really good price now I’m replacing

Those Timbers with some block because all of those Timbers are starting to rot as all wood will do I do my best to use no teal gardening in my garden I really love that concept but one thing that gardening has taught me over the years is not one size fits all

We all have different climate Soil and Water our water here is really hard and we have little rainfall and that all contributes to our soil every once in a while I find that my beds get a little hard and compacted even though I load up with lots of organic matter and it is

Good soil I never walk on it but every once in a while I have to use a digging Fork to loosen that soil up my main Garden space is 50x 60 with 13 large garden beds and a 12x 16 ft Greenhouse nestled in a corner most beds are 3ft

Wide and I love the width of this bed I can easily reach the center making it easy for planting weeding and feeding the length of the beds range from 22 ft to 35 ft and mine are staggered just for the Aesthetics of it my space between

The rows is only 18 in and this is very close I can get more food in a small space this way but the big downside is my wheelbarrow doesn’t fit easily between the rows making it where I have to haul compost in and spent plant

Matter out by buckets and by the end of summer everything has exploded and it feels like a jungle if I had more space between these beds it would be more efficient and it would be easier to handle the work clo but hindsight and we all have it the perimeter of my garden

Has multiple blackberries and some fruit trees behind the greenhouse is a small space and a little cooler microclimate so I planted raspberries there raspberries need that in a hot environment this base would otherwise be wasted the fruit trees offer a little dappled shade on the south side of the

Garden which is perfect for growing more golden raspberries and black raspberries plus some strawberries our summers a really really hot here in southern Utah our zone is 8A they can get to be about 115° on the hottest part of the summer with little rainfall if any at all

Having the trees next to the Garden actually makes the garden just a little bit cooler and it offers some dappled shade but the downside is those beds right next to those trees get some of those tree roots because those tree roots really love that rich garden soil

So if I had it to do all over again I’d actually take those trees and move them a little bit more south on the ends of almost all of my vegetable beds I have perennial vegetables herbs and pollinator friendly flowers in fact one bed that runs north and south that

Borders the Orchard and garden is almost fully dedicated to herbs and pollinator friendly flowers with a few veggies tucked here and there my garden is full of bees hoverflies butterflies happy pollinators that all keep it in harmony with nature and without those pollinators our Gardens can’t be near as

Productive all around the outskirts of my garden is my duck run this is a great defense against pest not that I don’t have pests but they do a great job of helping keeping them down they love slugs and snails now Ducks aren’t for everybody they can be noisy and they can

Be messy they have their run and the full range of the Orchard and I can H them easily wherever I want them to be ducks can trample a garden and eat your new seedlings so they’re best not to be right in the garden but rather around the perimeter of the garden and

In my Orchard makes it perfect harmony they don’t harm the blackberries but they do find Refuge under them and the fruit grows high enough that they can’t get it but of course anything that’s low they’ll eat they also keep weeds down poop which fertilizes the trees and the

Berries ducks have been a part of our little Homestead for a good many years the Ducks I have now are Indian Runners which are one of the best for Pest Management plus I love the way they run straight up soil health is a huge part of a highly productive Garden every time

I plant and I do mean every time I add compost something goes out compost goes in you would think with all of these years that I’ve been adding compost and adding compost that I would have this huge heaping pile of dirt but it breaks down over time and it’s never been a

Problem and I’ve never had to remove anything from my garden beds if I didn’t feed continually the soil would become depleted and production and health of the plants would decline if there’s one thing to learn here is to always feed your soil good organic matter and

Compost is one of the best options at the very least yearly but as often as you can is better I do a lot of Highly intensive planting this does a couple things for me I get a lot of food in a small amount of space there’s less exposed soil

Which means less water evaporation so that saves on water plus there’s a lot less weeds doing it this way if I lived in a climate that had higher humidity and more rainfall then I’d have to plant my plants further apart because they’ve got to have that air flow otherwise they

End up with funguses and diseases we live in a really dry hot environment so it really is to our benefit to plant them close together I also do a lot of inner planting I’ll plant lettuces underneath my tomato plants and by the time that the lettuce has gone to seed

The tomatoes have taken over and they’ll shade that area that soil to keep that moisture in another one that’s really good to put together is cucumbers and beets the Cucumbers will grow up at Tris and the beets will occupy that space below so you have no wasted space

Triline is another way that I get more yield out of the garden our high winds here can make it challenging so we have to use the beds that’s next to the greenhouse to protect those vertical crops this year we’ll have new solid fence on the North side which should

Help with that just a little bit this bed right here is right up against the greenhouse so it’s really protected during the winter time it’s south facing and it’s protected from those North prevailing winds that are really cold here so I can grow a lot of my greens

Right in this bed with no protection all winter long we have a pretty long growing season with Frosty days from April 15th to November 1st give or take a few and when we get snow it’s really minimal and it only lasts for a day or two by using hoop houses or Frost

Blankets that can extend our growing season several weeks and that gives us a lot more Growing Power with that being said I can grow year round in my climate I can have a spring summer fall and winter garden which gives me more of a food bank winter months I can grow

Garlic Leakes brussels sprouts and leave crops in the ground like carrots and turnips which store them and also sweet sweetens them all summer bottling fermenting freeze drying and freezing have to be done to keep the food store full for the winter months not always an easy task when life is so busy already

But that’s all a part of being self-sufficient and that’s where Winters are nice because you get a little break I never leave a space bare or at least for very long if I do like wintertime I’ll cover my beds with leaves or even goat manure so it can

Break down and improve the soil for spring plants planting when cool seasoned crops are spent out they go to the chickens goats or compost heap and in goes more compost and another crop gardening has its ups and downs some years one crop May produce outstanding

And the next it may be a total failure for one reason or another so I always plant a few more plants than needed hard work observing the garden a few prayers and by the grace of God the garden will produce thanks for joining me