Can you really grow a garden with NO weeding and NO watering?
In this video, I show you exactly how I build a no-till (no-dig) garden bed using sheet mulching—and why this method worked so well for us last year. We didn’t weed. We didn’t water. And the garden still thrived.
This year, we’re expanding the huge new homestead garden using the same low-maintenance approach.
🌿 What is no-till / no-dig gardening?
No-till gardening is a method of building soil without disturbing it. By layering organic materials like cardboard, compost, and mulch, you can create fertile, weed-resistant beds that hold moisture and support healthy soil life.
📍 About our garden:
We garden in a cold Canadian climate (zone 5/6) and focus on growing food in harmony with nature—no-till, low-input, and as sustainable as possible.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Sheet Mulching
3:42 Why No-Till
5:24 No-Till Applied to Small Suburban and Urban Gardens
6:13 The No-Till Potato Trial
8:22 Tips for Sheet Mulching Method
13:12 Prepping last year’s no-till patch for broccoli & cauliflower
17:26 Does straw mulch have weed seeds?
22:49 Update on the fungus gnats
24:40 Summary of no-till garden plans for 2026
Minor With Cricket by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
10 Comments
Love your channel. But please when you say no watering, please accompany this with a show a climate chart or graph. Daily rain, daily dew, dayly evapotranspiration potential 😉 harder to find, depth of topsoil and water reserves. I ghink a new lidaf map can show the inground water potential
I think you’ll find the tractor will cause big problems of compaction for years to come, seeing the mud it created.
Put the moquito things in drains ?
wow nice technique
I got a bug zapper with a purple glow that the gnats like compared to my blue light one. Also a vinegar cup. I water and add peroxide which is supposed to kill the eggs. I still have them but not as bad as in the beginning.
I too LOVE sheet mulching! I don't know if you have Lowe's big box hardware up there. Here in the US they use large 7ft x 8ft sheets of double walled corrugated as slip sheets in their trucks. Nothing on the at all, just a single fold. Phenomenal for sheet mulching! I find a friend in the shipping department and they set them aside for me. Lifetime supply! 😊
Put bread soda on your window sills, it kills fungus. Also put some down your drain
Jealous of your tractor lol. I'm 4 cu meters into a 12 cu meter soil and wood chip project, only wheelbarrow and shovel
I just planted my potatoes yesterday but forgot the cardboard just put on straw, will that work too or do I need to go put cardboard down today?
good content, i specialize in editing content for similar outdoor creators & I'd like to partner with you to better your content…let's connect to output more & grow the channel