➡ Three months ago, a person started a sustainable food forest with the help of a gardening expert. They transformed a half-acre of bare soil into a thriving garden. The expert shared advice on starting a garden, including physical preparation, understanding the environment, and using mulch to control weeds. They also discussed dealing with plant diseases and the importance of choosing local plants for better growth.
➡ The text is about a person’s experience with gardening and farming, including growing corn, squash, pumpkins, apples, hops, carrots, and potatoes. They discuss the challenges and successes they’ve had, such as not having enough rows for full pollination or growing a large carrot. They also talk about consulting with an expert named Ashley, who can help with understanding the land, climate, and how to deal with pests and other issues. The text ends with a promotion for survival gear from CanadianPreparedness.com.

Three months ago, I embarked on a journey to create my own sustainable apocalypse food supply. With the help of Ashley from Gardening in Canada, we turned a half an acre of bare soil into a lush and thriving centropic food forest. Now she hasn’t seen it since we planted it. So let’s go get her and surprise her with the results that we’ve made. A lot of people think they’re just going to get into this life. They think they’re about this life. They think they’re just going to buy a greenhouse and the stuff is going to grow itself.

But if you don’t know what you’re doing out there and you don’t know somebody like you, then that’s going to be a big problem for a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people I talk to even just like starting an initial garden on bare grass, bare ground. Some people even struggle with that. Are you doing consulting right now? Yes, but I only have like so much time and space. You have like a wealth of information. Somebody was starting a garden. What are the sorts of things that you could help them with? I mean, you want to kind of divide it up into groups.

So the first thing would be like physical preparation. So what are you where are you placing it? What is your landscape look like? What is your environment? What natural disasters are you prone to experience start directly in ground versus what plans do you have to start in fertilizers? What past they’re supposed to what kind of what you’re saying is people need to call you and book an appointment. OK, so now we’ve arrived at the orchard. OK, so eyes closed. Now turn this way. We’re going to show you what the orchard looks like after three months.

Are you ready? Open them up. That explains the IQ. Oh, you know, pot smokers, according to Joel Rogan, have higher IQs. Demons be gone. Be gone, demons. Be gone. Let’s go check out the actual orchard. I’m going to get you to turn around and just try to remember what it looked like when you first came. Turn around and check it out. Open your eyes. What do you think? It’s actually pretty good. That’s it. It’s OK. This is a centropic food for us. Yes. But what is that? So basically you have a bunch of plants that work in symbiosis to benefit each other.

So whether it’s ground cover and protecting the ground from erosion or plants put in place to help fix nitrogen or if it’s for shade. So it’s plants that are complementing one another. Yeah. So that won’t naturally compete with one another and will help each other long term. You’re not going to see like miraculous benefits for a while. But over time, it’ll start to make more and more sense. I would encourage you all to go and check out our original Centropic Food Forest video, because that’s where we explain everything that we planted, why we planted it in a place that we did the method that we used to plant it.

So we’re starting off with our maple tree. The maple tree is looking a little weird. What’s up with that? You’ve got like a blight, like a bacterial issue, and then you have bug damage. So these ones, how do I do this? So anything that doesn’t go right through and is blotchy like this generally is like a fungal or a bacterial issue. When it starts looking like actual teeth marks, that’s an insect, because it was so exposed to wind and that sort of thing, you’re going to just have a lot of natural ripping and tearing.

To be honest, the rule is that this is just the nature tax. So the volume of damage you have is just the tax for doing your business and mother nature. If it’s below 30%, it’s completely fine. I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t stress about it. That’s one thing about where we are. The winter just kills off everything. It just obliterates it all. Otherwise, it looks really healthy. So it’s been a battle with the weeds, a real serious battle with the weeds. It always is. Now it looks like it’s just grass again. I can kind of handle grass more than weeds.

Is grass better than weeds or is it the same? You could argue it’s worse because it’s competing with the plants. We do have this. This is a real pain in the ass. This is buckwheat, right? The only thing that’s going to stop that is either you getting out here every week or every day and just weeding. The other thing is mulch. Mulch is one of those things where it’s kind of like your health. You invest in it and the more you add to it over time, the better the results from it are. So the more mulch you add over the years, the better.

The other option if you were starting out and you didn’t have physical plants in place would be to solarize the soil. Plastic poly, placing it over what would have been grass here and then letting it cook. You can let it cook all fall into the spring and then once everything’s really baked in, you pull the poly off and then you’d rototill it all under. I don’t know what this plant, same thing. We had some issues with this plant. This is fungal. You can tell because it kind of looks like a white powder, almost looks like it’s shiny in some spots.

This one leaf in particular is a really good example. That’s fungal because you can tell bacteria is black and blotchy. This is like a silver powder. So is this plant going to die or what’s the deal? No, you’re good because you’ve got lots of like new growth and it looks like your new growth actually doesn’t, it’s not infected at all. Will winter kill the fungus? Yeah, it will. Like when we’re talking about like organic forms of protecting your garden, one thing to stock up on would be sulfur. So you can get sulfur pucks that kind of turn into a gas and that you can spray your orchard with.

Does that really stink? It does. Oh, it smells like rotten eggs. It’s horrific. So another thing you can use for that natural fungicide is whey. So if you make cheese, the byproduct of that is whey. Or if you have like rotten milk, you mix it with some water and then you spray it onto your plant. And it actually explodes the spores inside of powdery mildew specifically, and it works fantastically soon. Why am I getting leaf curl on these squash? It just happens like we’re so late in the year. As the season goes on, you’re just going to have things are going to look rough.

Yeah, like you’ve got some of this looks like sun scald like they got sunburned, which wouldn’t shock me because the sun is ridiculous lately. You told me to buy this thing. Citronella. Citronella. Okay. Mosquitoes. Really? Yeah. Whoa. Wow. Could’ve sworn I went over this. That smells really good. What happens if you if you just rub this on yourself? Yeah, that’s what it is. Watch, I’m going to get a nasty ass rash. Yeah, so no, you like rub it all over yourself. They actually say if you have the plant near you that it would also prevent mosquitoes.

But yeah, not around here. That’s hippie hippie stuff. Cherries seem to be doing good. You know why they do good? Because those are the ones that were bred by the University of Saskatchewan. Whenever you are looking for anything, whether it’s perennial or even at times, you know, stuff that you like garlic, for example, that you plant this fall, you always want to go for something that’s local. So and by local, I mean not from Home Depot. What I mean is like something that’s at the garden center that has been specifically bred for your environment. So University of Saskatchewan makes a lot of cold climate fruit, bush, tree, all that sort of stuff.

And they sell them, you know, all over Canada. That would be a good reference. So it’s important to understand that when you go into like a big box store in particular, they’re getting those plants from all over the place. All over. The corn is a little short. Hey, you know what they say about guys with short stuff. They’re secure. They’re very secure. Tell me what’s going on with this corn. Why do I got bonsai corn plants? How tall are corn plants supposed to grow? Much taller than this. You could. I don’t know a variety you got first off.

So maybe you got like a shorter variety, which is totally possible. You also planted them very late. Yeah. Corn where we are, in particular, needs to be sown almost immediately. As soon as. To be honest, yeah, if the soil is warm enough and you can get it out the sooner, the better because they need a much longer growing season. How many cobs do you get per stock typically? Two. Well, I’m still getting my looks like I’m getting one or two on these. Yeah. No, you are. Yeah, no. So what does it matter if it’s tall? For the greenery, that’s your photosynthesis.

OK. So if you’re small, then you can’t bring in as much energy. And if you can’t bring in as much energy, you can’t make as big of cobs. One mistake you did make. Didn’t put four rows. Yeah. How’d you know that? I was going to say that. I just I wanted the shelter belt. But despite that, they still pollinated. They did because it was a horobrifically windy. If we come across one that you think might be done, maybe we’ll pick it. That one right there is done. It’s not done yet. Yeah, it is. It’s done. This is not done.

It is. Pull it off. Trust me. If this is tiny, you’re fired. OK. Just break it. It feels wrong. What am I, Lorena Bobbitt? It’s so right. Don’t worry about it. You didn’t have full pollination. I can guarantee you didn’t have enough rows for full pollination. Look at that. I grew that. That’s sweet. I know. Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that good? I know. It’s like so much better than anything you ever buy. Now getting to the stuff I’m excited about because we got a bumper crop of squash and pumpkins this year. This is one.

Can I pick this one? Yeah. All right. Let’s pick this sucker. But one of hundreds of our finest squashes. Nate’s babies. Spaghetti squash. You’re going to need living off this with how many you have. How long will that last? Next spring. Honest to God. If you put these in a cold room, if they don’t, they should make you a spring. So this, you want to make sure that the actual physical stem is left on. If you break it off at the base, you want to eat those ones first. Okay. And then to sort kind of like your food supply, if you will.

You want to do damaged ones first, then smallest to biggest because the biggest ones are going to be the ones that are going to last the longest in storage. One of the most expensive trees we bought. Whoa. There’s crab apples on here. I did something, Mom. Why’d you harvest it? It’s not ready. I don’t know. Are you saying it’s not ready? It’s weird. It’s like very… Is that the face of a man? It’s very tart. Oh, wow. Yup. Yup. It almost like numbs your mouth. Yeah, it does. It’s like a lot of candy now.

I paid 300 bucks for this piece of shit. If I ever have a toothache, would it be good to eat? Well, but the plant looks healthy. Yeah, he does look really healthy. I’m really excited to show you this one. We have what appears to be a red apple tree, which ain’t doing the greatest, but it’ll come back next year. But what really has impressed me here is the hops plant. Because this thing, when we first brought it here, it was not doing good at all. And then it just took off, and now it’s in this complete symbolic entanglement with the apple tree.

Is this good? Is this bad? Did I do good? Tell me what I did most. So, this is what we wanted. This was the purpose of planting a vine next to something that’s taller and statcher is for it to climb. Because that keeps it away from pests. The only thing that I’m going to advise to watch is how aggressive this tree or this hops is being. So you want to watch it and potentially cut it back. It’s a stage 5 clinger. Yeah, so you might want to cut it back. Smothering me. Yeah, you might want to cut it back, but otherwise it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to.

Like this one here, this I would clip. Because see how it’s rubbing and you can’t get your finger underneath. When I make fun of you for your knife sharpness. No, no, I usually use my knives as sharp. You’re such a bull. There’s never been a single time I’ve come and used a knife of yours that has been actually sharp. Just because I’m always using it. Uh-huh. Okay, better. That’ll leave some stress. Yeah, so that one I would, but these ones are all good because you can just fit your finger. So they’re not like pulling on the tree.

What happened with my carrots this year? My carrots are kind of thick. Oh, how’s that? Are you jealous? How you doing? Oh, hey, I got a big carrot here. Whoo. Take a look at this sucker. Like Bugs Bunny up in his bitch. Holy shit. What? I’m impressed. That’s pretty difficult. People normally can’t get carrots like that for you to do that. Is this, why is it white? It’s just the kind of carrot it is. Has less carotenoids in it. Oh, shadow. Marshall. Oh, shut up. Are you serious? Yes, they love carrots.

I got some potatoes over here. Let’s go check those out. What the fuck is that? What the hell is that? It’s a deformity. That’s how you know. That’s what it looks like, you know. I don’t know. That’s how you know that you’ve had pesticides on this property before. Oh, there’s one. Hey, this ain’t too bad. You’re like an old babushka. Look at that. Is it quite compacted in there or is it pretty loose? Oh, that’s actually okay. So that’s why they’re doing so well. I tilled this bitch. Yeah, no, that’s good. You can tell.

That’s what you want. Like, if you can’t stick your hand in a potato hole like that by the end of the season, then that’s a sign that you didn’t do your soil right. This is how I’m going to survive. You’ve done good. I did good. I didn’t think those words would ever come out of my mouth. Okay, guys, so Ashley does consulting. Now, if you are actually serious about this prepping stuff, serious about creating a homestead, you absolutely need to contact her because she’s going to help you with all your questions about how you tell them.

What are you going to… If somebody comes to you for a consultation, what are you guys going to talk about? If they’re coming to you and they’re like, hey, I’m a big subscriber of Nate, I’m a little nutty like Nate, and I think that the world is going to end, and I want to build myself an apocalypse homestead retreat, completely unabashed, shameless request. What are you going to advise them on? Okay, so first off, I’m going to convert them to me away from you so we can bring their IQ up.

After that, we are going to look at your landmass, where you’re growing, what your zone is, what your minimum and maximum temperatures are, what your soil is like. Do you have a composting protocol in place? Do you have a way to take care of pests and deal with frost and too much sun? Do you know what you’re growing to? Do you know how to seed safe? All of that, like we’re talking, start to finish, depending on where the person’s at in their journey. If you want some advice, it’s well worth the investment.

Go check out our channel. She’ll give you some advice. She’ll show you what you’re doing wrong. She’ll get on your nerves, but she’ll make sure you have food to eat after shit hits the fan. Thanks for watching, folks. Don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe. Canadian prep around. The best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at CanadianPreparedness.com, where you’ll find high-quality survival gear at the best prices, no junk and no gimmicks. Use discount code PreppingGear for 10% off. Don’t forget, the strong survive, but the prepared thrive. Stay safe.

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