GROW YOUR OWN
There is no denying that growing your own fruits and vegetables requires water, but you may be surprised to know a well designed foodscape can substantially reduce water use when compared to turf grass. We have foodscaped our entire front yard transforming our landscape into a beautiful food producing oasis that produces the most delicious... Continue Reading →
It is so incredibly fantastic that sooo many people are excited to grow some of their own food. Home grown vegetables taste amazing and by foodscaping we can make it look good and grow a ton of food in a small space. Our 4’x10’ bed Spring 2020 We thought it would be fun (and hopefully... Continue Reading →
Foodscaping is like a silver bullet for today's biggest problems: our own personal health, our community health, and our long term sustainability. Foodscaping is how we can weave healthy food into our surroundings and sustainable health into our daily lives.John C. Trimble, TedXOgden 2020 https://youtu.be/6gaLvVhd7ZY The experience of giving a TEDx talk was like no... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/PoWj6VIPg0c In this video we take an early August tour of our frontyard foodscape. Our approach to foodscape design puts the food bearing crops front and center. They are the features. Featured in this video are beautiful squash and pumpkin covered cattle panel arbors, espalier fruit trees and an amazing grape arbor that is loaded... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/uIYU0kCyVqU This video provides 10 tips and keys to success for how to grow healthy fruit trees and delicious fruit. Topics covered include, sun, soil, water, climate, cross pollination, size, fertilizer & mulch, pruning, thinning, and integrated pest management, as well as sunscald or southwest winter sun damage as a bonus tip. The video is... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/i3d3atUX8ng In this video we give a tour of our frontyard foodscape in May of 2020. The video includes lots of tips for growing vegetables as well as fruit trees without using a lot of space, and discusses dealing with pests in May. Featured throughout the video are examples of closely spaced vegetables and flowers... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/ryHHGXxhP_o This video briefly introduces Foodscaping Utah and announces that this Spring we will host foodscaping classes/events on YouTube Live! Foodscaping Utah helps people get started growing food. We get a group of volunteers together and foodscape people's front yards. Home owners get a foodscape and volunteers get the knowledge they need to foodscape their... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_KtWKRTUHE In this video we tour our foodscape and talk about how understanding microclimates in your region and around your house can help you grow more food. Elevation and cold air drainage The video features an almond tree in full bloom and starts by discussing how almonds aren't typically grown in Northern Utah but can... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/5d22u9kqdnI We take a quick tour showing our 6ft x 8ft (1.8 x 2.4 meters) greenhouse made by Palram. The video features our rain catchment system and barrel, solar panels for fans, two citrus trees (meyer lemon and mandarin orange), and our vegetable seed starting station. We discuss numerous tips for a small hobby greenhouse... Continue Reading →
The best way to get started planning your vegetable garden is to make a list of all the vegetables you love to eat! Get excited to grow some of your own food and make a good plan with planting dates and spacing that is best for the particular plants you want to grow. An hour... Continue Reading →
What is foodscaping? What are the benefits of foodscaping?What inspired Foodscaping Utah? This video answers those questions, features footage of beautiful foodscapes, and highlights some of the amazing work our volunteers have done foodscaping our community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NslLUjYqiA Foodscaping Utah is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization of volunteers that help people get started growing food. Thanks to... Continue Reading →
Foodscaping provides front-door access to the most nutritious, best tasting fruits and vegetables possible With the start of the new year and health-related resolutions on the minds of many, we thought it would be timely to consider dieting trends and how foodscaping enables healthy living. Every year U.S. News releases a fresh batch of diet... Continue Reading →
We were thrilled to have been featured on Modern Gardener! Modern Gardener is a fantastic online show on KUED, Utah's PBS station. They feature people and organizations that are committed to educating Utahns about gardening and landscaping. We love what Modern Gardener does and were honored to be invited for a feature. They did an... Continue Reading →
Some time ago an aspiring gardener at a Foodscaping Utah volunteer event asked what we do about insect pests. The timing of the question was a little unexpected because we had been talking about other things. Without really thinking about it I said, "we plant flowers". Of course we do manage pests in other ways... Continue Reading →
Fallen leaves are an incredibly rich source of organic matter. If you have deciduous trees in your community, use as many of those wonderful pieces of organic nutrient-dense fertilizer that you can get your hands on! Every fall we put up a sign in front of our foodscape that says "we want your leaves"...and...lo and... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/qZCNsSj2dR0 We show how to graft apple and pear trees using a grafting tool. When grafting apple or pear, this type of grafting tool makes it really easy, because it makes the cut for you when you squeeze it like a hole puncher. Here, we demonstrate grafting a fruiting variety of pear (harrow delight) onto... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/kMkrZlqyRbc We show how we 'flipped our parkstrip' replacing grass with a bee and butterfly garden. The video shows how to replace sprinklers with drip irrigation using a drip retro kit which includes a filter and pressure regulator. To remove the grass we mowed the grass super low, covered it with soaked cardboard, and three... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/sGm-i4oKmz8 In this video, we talk about how to plan a garden for a fall harvest by sowing seed in mid to late summer. We cover what to plant and when to plant it. We also discuss several advantages to growing cool season crops for fall harvest including improved flavor in leafy greens and less... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/teb87wel8gY In this video we give a tour of our frontyard foodscape in July of 2019. On one side of our front foodscape we have redwood raised beds, pea gravel paths, fruit trees in wood chip mulch, as well as lots of perennial flowers. On the other side (phase 2), we have frameless raised beds... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/R39Ulpsii4k In this video we show three different ways to grow espalier fruit trees starting with a nectarine trained to an informal fan, then an apple as a three-tier horizontal espalier and finally a Belgian fence of nine apple trees in a twenty foot span trained to a lattice design. The video moves from the... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/CSvJlntWuXE In this video, we go over 5 useful tips for planting vegetables from transplant or seed: Timing: cool vs warm seasonLocation: sun & soilSelecting transplantsPlantingWatering Our top tip for beginning vegetable gardeners is to spend some time planning when to plant what you want to grow so that your crops will thrive. In Utah... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/Rd4WOGDl8Jg September 2019 April 2020 We show how we installed phase 2 of our frontyard foodscape by digging out most of our grass lawn, mounding up soil for nut tree mounds and vegetable beds. In the nut mounds, we planted an all-in-one dwarf almond tree and two hazelnuts (filbert). When foodscaping our frontyard for phase... Continue Reading →
We were on the Hortoccult podcast early May 2019 and had a blast talking about Foodscaping Utah with Hortoccult hosts Blaine and Brad! We discussed everything from what was the inspiration to start Foodscaping Utah and how the volunteer program works, to what are a few of our favorite things to grow. Huge thanks to... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/7h3y_4b2mcQ We show how to use organza bags and Japanese apple bags to protect apples and pears from worms without spraying. We explain how the worms are the larva of the codling moth, which is a major insect pest of apples and pears. The first half of the video demonstrates attaching the bags to the... Continue Reading →
Foodscaping Utah is now officially a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit! A huge thank you to everyone for all of the support. Through our T-shirt campaign last December, we earned enough money to cover the fees associated with the filing paperwork. We submitted the last of the paperwork in January and just received a letter from the... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/PdpjvB5O0oc We show how to build a simple trellis, prune young vines, and train them to the trellis. We then take a look at what pruning looks like on more established vines. To add these trellised grapes to our foodscape, we planted one vine bareroot in March of 2018 and two potted vines in June... Continue Reading →
The story of how Foodscaping Utah got started and where it is headed.
John had the exciting opportunity to appear on the KSL Greenhouse Show to talk about Foodscaping Utah!
https://youtu.be/9r2ZY9GMhL4 We give a tour of our frontyard foodscape in July. Featured throughout the video are examples of closely spaced vegetables and flowers to make the most of the space and capture as much sunlight as possible. Ways to conserve water with tight spacing and mulch are also discussed. Featured plants include tomatoes in a... Continue Reading →
UPDATE: in 2020, two years after our original video, we recorded the following class Live on YouTube. In this longer videoed class, you can see in depth summer fruit tree pruning on trees of varying sizes with lots tips to keep the trees healthy and producing the best fruit: https://youtu.be/9Tl81oIShBs In the video below we... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/dwWDLZW9e2c We show how we grow more food in less space by multicropping our annual vegetable crops. In this case, we show planting squash transplants where peas are finishing and interplant beans among finishing broccoli, cauliflower, and beats. The video also features a demonstration of how to plant a squash transplant, and tips for crop... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkRtX_0V3tc&t=2s We give a tour of our frontyard foodscape in mid June. Featured items include tomatoes that are already starting to ripen, artichokes that are ready to harvest, and lots of flowers that attract beneficial insects (bees, predatory wasps, ladybugs) while adding beauty to the foodscape (borage, marigold, amaranth, chamomile, impatiens, echinacea).
https://youtu.be/N0NA-OkS-Hc Video showing how to build the support structure for espalier fruit trees, how to prune dormant apple trees to set them up for espalier training, and how to train them to a lattice shape, Belgian fence design. June 2018. Read more about Espalier Fruit Trees at https://foodscapingutah.org/2017/12/1... Video update: https://youtu.be/FNSnat7QvaY Photo updates: September 2018... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/pTPCJNE5MJk We give a tour of our frontyard foodscape in early May. Featured items include tomatoes planted early with the aid of red plastic mulch, perennial vegetables (asparagus & artichoke), strawberries, peas on a DIY trellis, a grape vine and eight fruit trees including three espalier fruit trees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJv0sG1oMfg How to install drip irrigation by either connecting to a hose or converting sprinkler valves and lines to drip irrigation. We show how we install drip in our raised beds and around our fruit trees. We also provide general guidelines for watering vegetable beds, fruit trees, and perennial fruit bushes in Utah. https://www.youtube.com/embed/pBSxfagI4sE?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent Free... Continue Reading →
Video showing how we replaced our frontyard lawn with raised garden beds, fruit trees and wood chips.
Foodscaping Utah's 'Benefits of Raised Beds' class handout: Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening-Foodscaping Utah Online class 'Benefits of Raised Beds' June 4th, 6:00-7:30pm taught by John (Foodscaping Utah) for USU Extension. Raised beds have many advantages: they prevent soil compaction, alleviate some weed pressure, and require less bending over. Their soil also warms more quickly in the... Continue Reading →
A foodscape design can be elaborate and encompassing, replacing large sections of lawn and traditional landscaping, or it can be as simple as a well placed raised bed for vegetables and a fruit tree or two. We usually recommend that people interested in foodscaping start small, but in a well-thought-out way that lends itself to... Continue Reading →
Healthy soil makes for healthy plants; and fruit and vegetable crops depend on rich soil with good drainage. Making sure you start with good soil is one of the most important first steps when starting a foodscape. A garden's soil provides so much to plants: water, oxygen, macro and micro nutrients, not to mention anchorage... Continue Reading →
Espalier is one of those things that has been around forever (it dates at least to ancient Rome) but has somehow become forgotten over time. It is truly a lost treasure, because it still makes great sense, especially for foodscaping in an urban setting were space is limited. The term espalier is a French word that... Continue Reading →
Know anybody with a giant fruit tree that is so large that it's become a messy nuisance? What if we could keep fruit trees from getting so big? The benefits of a little fruit tree are numerous. A little tree doesn’t require much space, and is easier to care for; pruning, thinning, and harvesting can... Continue Reading →
Grape vines are fascinating plants. When our two small vines grew eight feet in their first season, our “grape vines would be cool” approach quickly turned into “uh, ….turns out we need a drastically bigger support structure”. In the fall of 2014, I started researching grape arbors. I found lots of general information online, but... Continue Reading →
In the summer of 2014 we worked on our vegetable garden and tended to our new fruit/nut trees and grape vines. This first year we tilled the garden bed and mixed in a bunch of compost. We mulched with leaves around tomatoes (mulch is great to retain moisture and suppress weeds) and planted marigold flowers... Continue Reading →
Our interest in gardening dates back to a community garden that we participated in while living in graduate housing during my graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. From our first plot in 2011 we were blown away by the incredible taste of the vegetables that we grew 25 feet from our apartment. Who knew... Continue Reading →
Foodscaping is the way we bring not only beauty to our surroundings, but also affordability, flavor and nutrition back to our food.JOHN C. TRIMBLE. TEDXOGDEN 2020 What do we mean by foodscaping? Foodscaping is replacing traditional landscapes with landscape designs that are not only beautiful, but also grow a lot of food in a small... Continue Reading →
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