Our offgrid cabin, is our home away from home. For the most part, we go there to relax, be closer to nature, and to take a break from daily homesteading chores. But we got to thinking recently about how much land we have there, and how it might be a good experiment to try to move some of our food production to the woods!
Not wanting to buy supplies, we found a few downed trees, carved some stakes, and created some raised beds. The soil under the leaves is very loamy, as it’s seen nothing but season after season, of whatever nature itself has provided (leaves, sticks, moss, acorns, etc) – nothing more. Basically, “back to eden” gardening, in its most pure form.
This fall, we will try to plant some of our garlic in this bed, with hopes that maybe it won’t all be consumed by the surrounding wildlife.
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37 Comments
Good idea, but yea, you probably would have a problem with the deer and all eating thing's up. The gsrlic is a good idea though. Like you said, worse case scenario, make a flower bed. Have a good weekend there. Such a nice and peaceful place.
Great plan! Zero expense is wonderful. We have grown food in the forest and on top and bottom of extreme hills. We had only an acre of full sun we cleared of trees on the top garden. There we grew tomatoes, peppers, blackberries, melons and squash and pumpkins. In the 2 acre lower garden we grew greens and Spring crops as well as perennials like garlic. We discovered passive planting and found using BTE method was very successful. So we would plant seeds after clearing for the season and cover with mulch. In the Spring the plants would return again.
We live in S E Tennessee and wild boar would by pass our garden and head straight for the compost pile. We raised hens for eggs and had an ongoing source of compost as well as our garden waste. Great system. Best wishes!
No Hosta if you plant a flower garden, the Deer LOVE them lol. Its such a problem over here (not far from your cabin) that the deer are eating Hosta's that are planted below my Granddaughter's nearly floor to ceiling Bedroom window and that bed as a 2.5 tall curving Shale wall barrier to deter them! I'll have to build Fort Knox to grow food for us here lol.
I live in the woods in Northeastern Michigan, I have to grow everything in pots up close to the house, the the deer don't eat it!
using whats around. very smart
Can't wait to see how it turns out.
I loaded up my raised beds with leaves last fall. It worked great!
It looks so relaxing there, I wouldn't want to leave.
It looks like you made the bed in the shade, most vegetables like direct sun.
if you like cucumbers they do well in a little shade
Great idea! I hope it works well for you.
You would have a hard time dragging me away from a place like that! Absolutely gorgeous! xo
Great video!!!!!!! Keep up the good work
Hey guys! Fantastic video… I just subscribed to your channel and look forward to going through all that you have done to make this channel so great! Please stop by my channel and say hi!
We used Logs for our raised beds here, lasted nicely the past 4 years, they are breaking down now, but that's okay by me. What a great idea to plant garlic there. Mushrooms might be another one to try in the woods. Maybe asparagus?
Super cute! Love how you used what you had! It looks natural and not out of place.
Hi Rachel
It was awesome meeting you to at the Hootnanny I Pray you guys have a amazing week God Bless💕
I totally Love the raised beds with the logs ! I think it is awesome. I planted Onion outside in a small raised bed i have here, and the suirrels.. them darn little buggers… They dug up the onions… Ide come out and replant them. Then they would do it again> And ide replant them. It went on and on. But them onions .. never had a fighting chance. They just ruined them. 🙁 Now they are just part of the soil LOL And i had about six vulunteer tomato plants pop up there, four zucchini plants pop up. and several tomatoillos all pop up. I dumped the soil from my caontainer garden in there last year. LOL ha ha. Oh well. At least something grew !
Love the natural look it has, hope you can get garlic and onion to grow there that would be a great use of that bed!
Excellent. We have some woods, and have been considering options. I think the garlic is a good idea. Other things the varmints haven't touched in our closer-to-the-house gardens are: horseradish, luffa, onion, pumpkin, cucumber.
We've thought about mushrooms out in the woods, but i know we would need to protect the logs from deer once the mycelium fruited.
Other things we've considered are ferns (for resale), and ginger.
Looking forward to your results.
New sub, here.
I've been thinking about starting to grow native stuff in the woods around our place. Stinging nettle, paw paw and hazel nut. I'd love to get ramps growing around the place as well, but I've never heard of anyone being sucessful at getting it started.
i found that the forest soil is great if ya use the top 4ins.,, the wild life will eat what you do so plant extra for them then eat them in season two for one shot.. thanks for the video have a blessed and safe day,,
What a great idea and quick and no money. Not sure if there will be enough sun for garlic, but worth a try.
Blessings from Maine,
Jim
My daughter spilled my seeds and I wasn't able to pick up all the Beet seeds and they are pretty large but I just didn't find them all and I found beets growing better than I could have ever planted and planned. I now grow them at the edge of our little backyard forest all the time along with Swiss chard and spinach and kale collard greens and even a little tomato I called splits for a wonderful tomato but they'll split if you do not pick them right away they came up from a hybrid tomato plant and I absolutely love them
Great channel. I love to watch and learn from people that actually grow something.
I live in Arizona, our soil is completely depleted of biomass. I have been working on any type of natural gardening that gets plants to grow.
I have done the Hope Indian dry farming technique, some type of hill culture, monocroping, free seeding, and now a "Back to Eden" type. Finally, after eight years, I have eaten food produced in my yard.
It is so important that you share your tips with the gardening community. It is so hard to get a good, healthy garden established.
Thank you for your time and effort. We need to see successful people like you making sustainability work.
My husband and I love your channel. Thank you for sharing. We hope to start forest gardening in the next couple of weeks 🤞
Didn’t work for me. Deer ate everything. Squirrels dig and eat as well as rabbits eating it.
Woods are the best place to grow and harvest mushrooms. And probably medicinal herbs.
I've got porcupines eating my onions
Thank you so much for your video!!! I'm getting ready to plant, here in Vermont. I have a wet, rocky field adjacent to a beaver pond; I have brooks, a small clearing, and lots of woods–17 acres in all. Honestly, I'll never garden in conventional ways because I'm just not going to fight Mother Nature when I'm surrounded by her bounty. I've spent my first year living here, on this land I inherited from my family–land I grew up with–observing what Nature already has going on. Along with planting, I'm working on learning about what is edible from among what's already growing here. I've planted bulbs in the midst of "weeds," and a few shrubs and currant bushes (which my dog has cut down to sticks). The only vegetable I planted last year, were some sweet potatoes from slips that I started myself (a little too late), and planted in a big pile of earth, rocks, and "weeds," that had been left until "later". The plants were amazing, and when I finally harvested, in November, I had an adorable crop of about a dozen sweet potatoes, ranging from 2" to 5" in length, and about 3/8" in diameter : ) That was just plain fun for me. I'm excited to see what my approach to vegetable-planting may yield this year. I'm going to plant all over the place, including in the woods. Also, I'm going in, assuming that the wildlife will eat a lot, and that my wonderful dog will chew up my woody plants….and believing that eventually, all that rich food will no longer be exciting and the wildlife will teach their young, "don't eat that…you'll get a stomach ache" and my puppy dog will get tired of the same old refrain: "Seriously! You've got acres of trees and plants to chew up and you chew up mine! Those are Loki's. These are Jessica's!"
Our Rocky Mtn Homestead garden in the forest soil did amazing…The soil is sooo fertile…with just 30 tomato plants I was able to harvest 100 gallons of tomatoes…Our other veggies produced just as well… It is essential to build a fence around the garden, though, or deer will devour not just a little, but everything…we have had issues with gophers, bunnies, mice, voles, packrats, marmots and other critters, but their damage was minimal in comparison to the deer. We have been able to conquer all of these critter issues, though…
Great video! I intend to do this on my new property!
I haven't started planting anything yet in the woods I'm still trying to landscape it but you are giving me some ideas I have a lot of pictures of what I've done send me a friend request on Facebook so you can see all my photos and maybe we can help each other
We live in a cabin in the forrest where we get 140 inches of snow per year. All we grow is Kale and potatoes. Luckily the sun peaks out part of the year and we have some barriers to keep the snow off the kale. We may put the greenhouse on the top deck so we can walk right into it during winter. The deer eat my plants so we'll need somewhere to grow the kale. They won't eat the tops off of the potatoes for some reason.
Was thinking about doing the same thing. You were first on my search. Watching now.
Where do you live? Or what is your climate like where you live?
Just found this video. Were u able to grow anything?