VLOG l I’ve got my work cut out for me – Spring Garden prep! Zone 9 Florida Permaculture Garden

#springgarden #permaculture #permaculturedesign #gardening #nodiggardening #floridagardening #zone9garden #notill #homesteading #gardenvlog #raisedbedgardening #raisedbedgarden

Ok, I admit it. All of these unexpected surprised are of my own doing. We’ve been in the process of flattening our huge pile of chip drop mulch in our permaculture garden. The next thing I know, we’ve received ANOTHER MASSIVE pile of mulch! It’s more than we anticipated for, but we’re so thankful to have so many resources to enrich our garden.

Another sudden surprise is, we’ve received our bulk order of mushroom compost! This compost is absolutely unmatched. However, a few turns of events bring me to a conclusion, that I need to start making my own compost, in bulk, for our huge homestead garden.

I can’t wait to see what our permaculture vegetable garden looks like come Spring!

Our homestead is based out of Florida, we value no dig and no till practices (deep mulching), while incorporating raised beds and permaculture values 💚

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gardening
Raised bed garden
Permaculture
Florida garden
Homesteading

A few unexpected Garden events have Happened so we were documenting how we were flattening out uh the current pile of Chip drop that we had on the property it was right there now as you can see it’s nice and flat not 2 Days Later a huge truck backs up into my garden and

I’m looking out the window like what is going on right now I had family over and everything sure enough it was another chip drop the reason why this took me by surprise is just because which it wasn’t a total surprise cuz I obviously placed the order I have gotten many chip drops

In the past and I’ve never gotten a chip drop this quickly one time it actually took like 8 months to get a chip drop so you really never know when you’re going to get one in my mind I think okay every time we spread one out just Place

Another order it’s going to take a few months then you’ll have another one and then the cycle just continues so on our property mulch is essential to our Homestead we utilize a deep mulching method for no till no dig we don’t use any type of garden Fabrics or anything

Like that we just really heavily mulch suffocate the weeds for one or two seasons and just continue the process so that we have more flexibility and we’re just enriching the actual soil over time we’re not going to actually spread this out before the Spring Garden has started

We’re just going to end up keeping that there and the good thing is I plan on really once we have reset the beds put uh plants in the beds I’m going to mulch all around those plants very heavily because I don’t want to have such a

Grass problem that I had last year we had grass tubers constantly you would pull all of the weat s and the next day they’re just completely back so as a way to fire off that problem I’m going to deep mulch the actual garden beds as well and not keep that soil exposed to

The Sun so that weeds and things like that can Thrive so it’s a good thing now the next unexpected thing is we got our huge delivery of mushroom compost this is also 20 cubic yards the reason why I say this is unexpected although it also was not

Is because I wasn’t expecting it this early we got it literally by the skin of our teeth by the grace of God I say that because the day that I messaged the vendor to get the mushroom compost was the last day that this company is ever going to do mushroom compost the actual

Factory is closing down it was so sad it was such a tragedy to hear that this company is closing down and I say that because we have purchased compost from them for well over 10 years at this point which is crazy to even think we were living in the city we figured out

That this place existed and we were just like filling up our whole backyard with tons of soil that’s when I first got the garden bug I was obsessed I was like I need to get out of the city and I need to get some land and start like homesteading anyways there’s lots of

Fond memories attached to this with my husband and I and like the early stage of our relationship just kind of building something because we wanted more for for our backyard we used to actually go and get it ourselves it was $10 a truckload it was so affordable

Then at some point they stopped allowing regular people just to drive up and get the compost and they made it so it was only exclusively vendors so then we started having to purchase it from vendors and it was oh my gosh much more expensive than the $10 a truckload that

We would purchase it from so I reached out to this other lady I knew who also um was a there and does mushroom compost delivery and she said that today is the last day ever that you’re going to be able to purchase this mushroom compost cuz the actual Factory is closing which

Is so heartbreaking to hear because I feel one a awful for the factory obviously and they were providing such an amazing resource for the local gardeners in the surrounding area something motivated me to reach out to her that day and get that deliver otherwise we would have we would have

Seriously been up a creek for spring I realize now I don’t want to be in that position moving forward I put myself in a vulnerable vulnerable position really relying on res like outside resources and now I know that I want to start sourcing our own compost creating our

Own compost here on the property and really to get the size of compost or the volume of compost that we need I need to start now for to prepare for next year so it’s a good thing when you think of it that way we have pushed off a lot of

Different projects because we’ve been in the process of having babies and raising children and having more babies and we’ve just pushed off a lot of projects but in 2024 I want this to be our year to accomplish a lot of different projects and creating a compost situation is number one on the list

There was one season where we didn’t use this particular compost that I trust we used a different vendor completely different soil and we filled up all of the beds with this particular compost and the beds as a result we were seeing weeds and plants that we had never seen

On our property before so they weren’t native to the typical weeds that we would see and every single bed was absolutely filled with weeds after that experience I felt like burned I it was so much more extra work to to control that situation and I’ve also heard of

People who have gotten soil and it was infiltrated with even worse things such as different herbicides and things like that and we ended up having to cover all of the beds with really heavy layers of U cardboard and we also had to do a really heavy layer of mulch followed by

Healthy compost to suffocate that problem and make it so that it wasn’t an issue which is another really big reason why I promote no till because when you’re tilling the garden you are bringing up weeds to the surface the seeds that otherwise would just be kind of buried down and you’re sometimes

Making a situation worse than um than otherwise I know everybody’s Garden is so different and some people have more heavy clay soils and that just might be the only way to do it here I just really believe in just doing layer on top of layer to suffocate the weeds from the last season

Now today the biggest thing I’m going to get accomplished is getting these flower beds completely filled I have my poppy flowers have all sprouted which is super exciting because you just never know you just never know in the garden what is going to work even if you are doing

Everything right all of my poppy flowers right here completely sprouted on top of these Sprouts I’m also going to put more poppy flowers in these beds so these front beds are just going to be exclusively flower beds and I like to do that because Flowers Reed themselves so

Efficiently that if you put them in the big beds sometimes you’re going to maybe have certain plats in there that you didn’t intend to have in there and I just like season after season kind of seeing like the um just like the hodg podge of flowers that decided to sprout

That year and it becomes more interesting season after season so we’re going to start out with just poppy flowers this particular spring season and I’ll probably put a few sunflowers like maybe towards the back that way as I’m walking through the garden it’s just kind of inviting us with flowers and

It’s going to look I like the garden to be really inviting [Applause] My brake just Broke hello what did thank You both beds are officially filled I think I’m going to let the beds sit for a few days before putting any type of seeds in it because it’s really ripe I don’t want to burn the seeds or burn the new Sprouts that I have just sprouted for the poppy plants which are right

Here looking absolutely lovely I’m going to come back out here and sew those seeds in a few days and that’s it for the day so thanks for hanging out with me today and watching me get some Garden chores done if you guys have any uh comments or

Anything like that I’d love to hear from you and until next time bye