The best gardening & homesteading channels on Youtube
Description:
We’re Derrick and Paula from Ontario, Canada. After getting married in the summer of 2014, we decided to give up our apartment, move into a camper van, and travel across this magnificent country of ours for our honeymoon. Upon our return, we decided to keep it up a little longer to save money and continue living a more simple life… Then, fast forward 2 years, and full-time van life helped us save up for a little house and a piece of land to call our own. And now, our focus has shifted to building a self-sustainable lifestyle, where we grow our own food, get back to nature, back to basics, and Back To Reality. And we sure hope you’ll join us! :)
Location: Canada
At the end of last year, we showed you how we built our mini root cellar using an old broken chest freezer. The whole thing was meant to be an experiment, based on the principles of an actual full sized root cellar, and our hope was that we could use it to store a good…
Over the past few years, we’ve been producing a lot of garlic and experimenting with a number of natural growing techniques. As a result, we ended up accidentally comparing 4 slightly different growing conditions, all at the same time: 1. Fresh hay mulch covering natural topsoil 2. Old spoiled hay mulch covering natural topsoil 3.…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — Earlier this year, we spotted a female Blanding’s Turtle, laying eggs in the sandy soil behind our house. Given how many hungry raccoons we have in the area, we decided to do our best to protect the nest until the end…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — Over the past few years, we’ve gotten fairly good a growing our own food. However, we haven’t always gotten a chance to eat it… before the critters did. So, at this point we figured it was finally time to finish…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — A short video about how I discovered my new favourite garden tool. It’s not what you would expect, but I’d recommend it for all gardeners (or at least those who are married, and want to stay that way). 😉 —…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — Over the past few years, we’ve been covering our entire growing area with thick layers of organic plant-based mulch. And so far, we’ve not yet had to pay for any of it. So, since we receive a lot of questions…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — As you may recall from our previous video about our neglected garden, I mentioned that our garlic scapes were past their prime, and likely far too woody to eat. Well, as a result of that statement, a number of you…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — Paula and I were tied up for much of June and July, meaning that we were often away from home and entirely away from our garden. So in this video, we’d like to quickly show you how our deep mulch…
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — After nearly four years of gardening, we’ve finally decided to plant some asparagus and strawberries! But as usual, we’ve also decided to skip the fertilizer, compost, and manure. We also decided to flip the sod, rather than using a tiller.…
NEW! Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — It’s finally starting to look and feel like Spring, so we headed outside to check out how our garden fared through the long frozen winter. Then we chopped and dropped last year’s plants and laid out some mulch. Or…
NEW! Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality By now it should come as no surprise that WE LOVE GARLIC. It’s easy to grow, it’s easy to prepare, and it’s easy to preserve. But if only there was an easier way to peel it… Well, now there is!…
NEW! Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality So back in November, we showed you how we built our mini root cellar using an old broken chest freezer. The whole thing was meant to be an experiment, based on the principles of an actual full sized root cellar,…
NEW! Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality After a couple years of planting, growing, harvesting, and curing garlic on this channel, last time we finally showed you one of the ways we actually USE garlic, in the form of garlic salt. But a few of you had…
NEW! Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality — If you’ve been following our channel for a while now, then you’ll probably agree that we talk a lot about planting, growing, harvesting, and curing garlic. But one thing we’ve never talked about, is how we actually USE the…
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality We wish you all a wonderful new year. May this one be better than the last, no matter where life takes you.
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality Now that we’ve doubled our growing area, it’s time to plant our garlic. Also: Crop rotations, our homemade hole poker thing, lessons learned, etc. Plant Hardiness Zones, Annual Rainfall, and Other Important Information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrAJbE0ZTA8 Instant Raised Garden Beds by Flipping Sod: Expanding our Garlic Patch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tay9Mi7XM4U No Dig Garlic: Planting,…
UPDATE: Mini Root Cellar Experiment (after 3 months of potato storage) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrlLpaZER7I — Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality After successfully harvesting 337 lbs of potatoes, we only had one problem: Where to store them?! Since we don’t have a root cellar, I came up with another idea using an old broken chest freezer and some…
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality In this video, we collect as many details as we can about the growing conditions in our part of the world, and tell you how to do the same. That way, you’ll be better equipped to determine whether or not the results from our experiments could easily be replicated in…
UPDATE: Here’s how we ended up storing them all: Mini “Root Cellar” from broken freezer (for storing potatoes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evM7taps76s Where We Get FREE Garden Mulch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww34XwhdeZ4 — After our first attempt at growing potatoes last year, it was pretty obvious that we’d need to increase the size of our crop if we’d ever hoped to…
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality After a long and difficult summer, we’re finally ready to give some garden updates. So let’s start off with the changes we’ve been making to our garlic beds, by flipping sod.
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality The weather is getting cooler, and we just harvested a pile of squash. So lets make some fresh Butternut Squash Soup!
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality This has been a very challenging summer, filled with family illnesses and other traumatic experiences. As a result, I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with worry for the future, and guilt for the past. However, I recently seem to have stumbled upon an effective technique for dealing with some of my stress…
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality Despite my best intentions to get Back to Reality, it turns out that in some parts of my life, I wasn’t doing a very good job. But tragedy has a funny way of helping us filter out all the background noise, and focus on what’s actually important.
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality At the end of last season, we decided to test a method of tomato preservation that we discovered in the following article: http://wire.farmradio.fm/en/farmer-stories/2016/11/burundi-farmer-finds-new-technique-for-preserving-tomatoes-15454 The article claims that the tomatoes, packed in wood ash, were preserved for up to six months without any negative effects. This video documents our experiment, as…
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality The results (and lessons learned) from our first attempt at companion planting corn, bean, and squash (Three Sisters Method) using a first-year Back to Eden garden. The “Back to Eden” Method of Permaculture Gardening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1aJOz3mEHI The Ruth Stout Method of Permaculture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfi-n0Oq38E Companion Planting Carrots, Radishes and Onions in a…
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality This Valentine’s Day, I’d like to take the opportunity to get just a tiny bit sappy… about Video Games.
Help support our channel: https://www.patreon.com/backtoreality The results (and lessons learned) from our first attempt at companion planting carrots, radishes, and onions using a first-year Ruth Stout Garden. The Ruth Stout Method of Permaculture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfi-n0Oq38E Companion Planting Carrots, Radishes and Onions in a Ruth Stout (HAY-ONLY) Garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMkn5b0jHhE Garden Update: Companion Planting Carrots, Radishes and Onions…
Last spring, we planted seed potatoes using the Ruth Stout Method. Here are our results (from planting to harvesting) without any digging, fertilizing, watering, or weeding! The Ruth Stout Method of Permaculture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfi-n0Oq38E Planting Potatoes in a Ruth Stout Permaculture Garden (QUICK and EASY) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dexx9kKVWeo Did You Know That Potato Plants Have Fruit?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k00q6bhIwfg
An animated short, to celebrate 2018 and look back at everything we’ve achieved over the past few years. From weekend backpacking, to full-time van life, and now our very own cabin – we’ve come a long way together. Thank you all so much for joining us! Happy new year!
Follow our garlic plants all the way from planting using the Ruth Stout method (hay mulch, no diging or tilling), to harvesting, and drying.
