Oh man, this is my wheelhouse here. I also don't even know how to say this without coming across as super pretentious and annoying, but literally everything you did was wrong! I'm so sorry to say that and I hope you take this all the right way. It's also super super common to do these things, which is why everyone struggles with gardening so much. The most succinct way to help would be to tell you to watch a video of mine called "this will change how you garden forever", but I know that's super offputting to come to someone's channel and suggest your own video, so I'll also explain some of it here. I will also not just say what you did wrong but how to do it right (at the end). Many of the plants you removed were actually clover, which is an incredible nitrogen fixer. Those beds were messy, yes, but they were extremely functional and hardy. Pulling out all the nitrogen fixers is going to put that soil into unsustainability mode. They were an important part of the polyculture, giving nitrogen from the air to all the plants around them. They are nature's little "soup kitchen" of nutrients for other plants. Then digging the roots with the claw. This is probably the worst thing someone can do, because most of these plants will be invasive "weeds" blown in from around you. Almost all of these tend to be pioneer plants, and when pioneer plants get their roots cut, they can actually nucleate a new root crown off the smallest root fragment. So when you dig in a garden bed like this, you sever roots of plants and you just turned 100 plants into 100,000 plants. So even though you wanted to get rid of all these plants, the action you took actually has the complete opposite effect. Man this is way more "negative" than I was hoping, but I have to say it all, to help you out. I really hope you are taking this all the right way... Okay so what's the right way to do this? Get a rice knife, or a hori-hori, or a scythe or even just a machete or scissors, and instead cut all the plants right at ground level, but then don't disturb or till or break the soil up in any way. There is a complex network of fungi in there which takes years to build, and was very healthy, and it was all destroyed (while also propagating plants you didn't want). Then all that biomass was taken to the city instead of composting because you don't have a compost pile yet. That's totally okay! Instead, just drop it all down on the soil as a green mulch. All that biomass had atoms in it, those atoms came from the soil (and the air), so when we cut plants away from a system then extract them from the system, we are essentially mining our soil of nutrient. So the best way to do this is to "chop and drop" anything we don't want. Cut it ground level and then drop it down onto the soil for the worms to bring down at night. Then you plant into it stuff that you want. As the new stuff regrows you chop and drop it more, and use those plants to grow soil for the plants you want. The other option would be to cut everything low and sheet mulch the bed. Cover in 2 layers of cardboard, then compost on top, and plant into it and mulch. The cardboard would starve the below-plants, and "reset' the bed, but without propagating stuff. If I were you I would do this from where you are now, because fragmenting all those roots is going to turn those beds into a warzone of pernicious plants. If you want to see my place and what these practices look like over time, definitely check my channel out. My most recent video called "what is permaculture" is a really good intro into a different way to gardening. I hope you do take time to check it out, because it would be tremendously helpful to someone in your situation - knowing a lot about container gardening, but just moving to a new house and starting a new area. That's the perfect person to start watching my stuff. I hope i can help you out, because I love what you do with the animal conservation side of things, I love the wild gardening ideas, and I know you'll fall in love with permaculture, syntropic agroforestry, wild-gardening, stuff that I do/teach. All the best Kristina, any comments/questions, let me know. I should see a reply to this, but sometimes it gets drowned out with notifications from comments on my channel, so if you do have any followup questions probably the best way is to leave a comment on my channel on any video. All the best, Keith. PS, My apologies for the offputting nature of any critique, and/or the suggesting my content. I know it's distasteful and I don't usually do it, but it's super relevant here!

Patio herb garden is a fantastic idea for the planters. In permaculture we have this "zone" philosophy for design, which is basically what you mention at 8:10. Plant stuff you need access to often, as close to the house as possible. Other great ideas for pots are zone-pushers and LONG lived perennials that you may want to take with you one day. For zone-pushers, they can be a good place to plant stuff like lemons, oranges, miracle fruit, moringa, jaboticaba, whatever weird tropical thing you want. This way you can bring them inside easily each winter. For the second thing (long lived perennials), planting something like Asparagus in a pot is a really good idea. A lot of people won't plant a 25-year lasting perennial like Asparagus because they don't know if they'll live in their house for too long. It may not be their "forever home", so people think, why bother? But planting them in a pot is a great idea because then if you ever do move you can just take them with you and plant them in the ground at your next place. You never know when you'll move. New job, housing price increase, etc... many things can happen that make us move, and being able to bring stuff like asparagus with you is always nice.

I am actually really happy you posted this despite knowing you made some mistakes. It really helps us other newbies from making the same mistakes. And the super helpful comments are helpful too. So thank you!

I would leave a raised bed the way it is just to keep the deer coming by...that’s awesome. Definitely don’t get deer swinging by in the city! I think they’re beautiful animals.

Have good diverse compost. Use some kind of mulch to cover the ground, it helps double as long-term fertilizer. The soil/mixture you use depends on what good or plants you plan to grow. If you are allowed to care for and own chickens, I suggest getting some cute chickens :) they double as organic humane free-range chicken eggs :) Plants hate having their roots destroyed. You can gently try to unravel them with your fingers :) then try to spread out their roots and bury the plant. If you want to stop the deer, set up a perimeter fence for your property lol I guess you can try to build a fence only around your garden.

For the interplanting concerns - throw those all in the garbage (the concerns, not the plants). In all of gardening space, the whole "companion planting" thing is the biggest steaming pile of hot garbage. There are only very few things that really matter - stuff like Juglans species, and, well, that's actually probably it. What matters more is the diversity thing, and not the specific plants that occupy the polyculture. Well to put it more accurately, there are "roles" that various plants can play, and ANY plant that does that role can work. There's no magical combination to unlock, and no critical error partnerships to avoid. It's more about creating a polyculture that has SOME kind of smelly aromatic confusing plant (this can be dill, thyme, sage, parsley, marigolds, onions, garlic, anything). Then SOME kind of nitrogen fixer which is used to chop/drop and act as a battery to the surrounding plants. Good options there are clover, seabuckthorn, groundnut/peanut, peas, beans, autumn olive, lupines, etc. Then SOME kind of pollinator attractors. This area, diversity is king. So many options here, literally hundreds or thousands even. Milkweeds, black locust, lindens, even creeping Charlie! Many pot-herbs are amazing here. Chives, dill, parsley, sage. Any plant that looks like parsley/carrots tends to attract predators. That open umbrella shaped flower. Then SOME kind of deep tap rooted nutrient accumulator. These plants take nutrient from WAY blow the roots of other plants, bring those nutrients into their own leaves, and then we chop and drop them and deposit them on the topsoil. This turns the plant into a nutrient pump, taking nutrient from deep below and putting it into the topsoil to build soil. Plants for this role have 2 requirements - deep tap root and respond very vigorously to being cut. Great options here are Comfrey (the best), mullein, dandelion, etc. Even lupines will have very deep tap roots and can perform this function (as well as the N-fixing function, as well as the pollination attracting function)... this is why they are such a great plant. Other than that, just focus on how plants "fit together", physically speaking. Your ideal garden is a wall of green. A poor garden is the "plants on display" look. It may look "nice" (I guess) but it's not functional, and is not regenerative. The best garden, all plants are crammed together and all spaces are filled. Evaporation is minimized, splashing and soil borne fungal diseases don't get propagated because soils don't get splashed, weeds don't germinate (no sun, no soil heat from sun), wind doesn't wick away moisture due to the density of plants, etc. It's all about density, diversity, and less about which plants play nice with with other plants. Forget all that, don't worry about all that, and just cram cram cram and fill all spaces with stuff you want. Or nature will put in there stuff you don't want. But nature abhors a vacuum and will fill any space with a plant.

Thank you guys so much for all your tips already! I am an in ground beginner so don’t follow anything I do without researching. Apparently I made a lot of mistakes! Learning and growing 😊 im going to try some different strategies for the other beds...

For the deer/marigold thing... yeah, that's such bollocks lol. 2-3 marigolds won't stop a deer, nor will covering your land in them. I can attest to that - my land borders thousands of acres of forest and I have SO MANY deer and rabbits everywhere. Yet I have gardens everywhere, food everywhere, and I don't lose much, if anything to those wonderful creatures. The key to dealing with deer is understanding WHY they are there. They don't want to be wandering a neighbourhood getting hit by cars and being shot by apes. But they do it because there's no food anywhere for them, because we clearcut it all and put up subdivisions. So the key to deer is to give them food where they want it. This is also a tough solution. For me, I "guerrilla garden", planting fruit trees in wild places all around my town. Abandoned parking lots, gas stations, outside the fence at home depot, they all get plants planted by me. My favorite for deer are 2 things... late-season apples and Jerusalem Artichokes. Late season apples are important because they often push into human settlements when they have no food in the late winter. So I look for apple trees that are holding apples in February, save those seeds (and scion wood for grafting) and propagate those trees all throughout my city. I plant probably 10,000 trees per year from seed, in about 10 cities around me. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's really not, planting from seed is fast. For the Jerusalem artichokes (JA), these are actually not artichokes, nor are they from Jerusalem. Interesting name. They are actually part of the sunflower family, so they have this tall gorgeous flower. They produce large edible tubers which we can eat (and are healthier than potatoes). Why am I mentioning it? The deer LOVE the flowers. They are like deer-crack. The flowers also respond very well to browse and regrow easily. So bordering your property with some Jerusalem Artichokes can serve as a "sacrificial cathode" for the deer. They'll browse the JAs, and leave your other stuff alone. Also planting these out in the wilder spaces can help give them food there, and keep them from pushing out into neighbourhoods where they often meet a sad end. For more info on JAs, I have a video specifically on them. They are incredible, probably my favorite plant that I grow. It's literally free food for life. They can be hard to find though, if you were closer I could ship you some, but they may not survive the trip. Thankfully BC is a bit of a hotbed of permaculture and you may be able to find some locally.

I may end up spamming you a bit here, but definitely have lots of tips. For the lupines, these are amazing plants - they are nitrogen fixers and even though they are non-native, the native insect biome has really taken to them and they bring in so many beneficial insects into your gardens. Wild bees enjoy them (which are vitally important, even moreso than honeybees), but also green lacewings and ladybugs enjoy them. These are probably 2 of the top 5 or so insects you could want to attract into your garden, as they love eating aphids, coddling moth and other stuff like cabbage moth. For nitrogen fixers though, it's not just enough to plant them. They must be cut. This is a good thing with lupines, because they do sucker and spread, and the best way to solve that problem is the chop/drop thing I mentioned in the other comment. Cut at ground level and drop to the ground. For nitrogen fixers specifically, the rhizobia bacteria which forms the nitrogen clusters on the roots will actually get disassociated from the host plant when the host plant is cut. Plants try to maintain an above ground and below ground mass, so when there is a disturbance (say an animal comes by and grazes it, munch, or a human cuts it chop/drop) the plant does 2 things. It sends new growth up to restore the lost balance up top. But it also sheds rootmass in order to regrow the new top growth (the energy has to come from somewhere, and the plant takes it from the roots). This helps further rebalance the plant. So when a nitrogen fixer specifically does this, those nitrogen nodules get shed off the roots and deposted into the soil. ONLY NOW can new plants access this nitrogen. It's also in a chelated (bioavailable) format, so the plants can actually access it very easily. Furthermore, it's a SLOW release natural fertilizer, so it doesn't burn plants. It's not water soluble so it doesn't wash away. Basically, it's the best thing ever. So with those lupines, leave them anywhere you can leave them. You WANT those everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Then you cut them to thin them (at ground level) and drop them down to feed the soil food web of life - i.e. a double fertilization event, all natural, all organic, all sustainable - no, it's not only sustainable, it's more than that, it's regenerative. TLDR: Keep any lupines you can - they are hard to establish. But once they are established they are amazing tool to use to build soil. Cut them to thin them, drop the plant material down as a green mulch and build that soil for free.

I'm so happy I found your channel 😊 so relaxing and your place is so beautiful

The garden is looking so good 😍

Congrats on you house! It's beautiful. You can get temporary mesh fencing from Amazon to go around your raised bed.

Wow 😍😍

Awesome😍👍

If the soil is too dense and you lack suplies, you can add some sand for extra drainage so the roots don't rot. I hope this was helpful.

Great vid thanks for sharing

Great work. I really need to get my garden going, but with so much rain recently I just haven't been able to get outside much.

Woohoo! Another great video. And your veggig es look beautiful! Have a lovely day!

You are simply amazing

Love you😍

Yay I’m so excited for you and your new home! It makes me feel very ecstatic for my future because I’ve always dreamed of having my own garden, succulents just aren’t for me haha. I don’t know too too much about interbedding, but I know kale can go with pretty much everything so it’s a good thing you have so much lol. Good luck! I look forward to the updates :-)

Fencing is a must if you don’t want the deer eating everything, especially since you know deer will be an issue! Just hoping they won’t bother it won’t be enough :p

Tips . I am new 😀I am learning from you

you should’ve used a Sickle it will take you to finish everything around 10 minutes and cut only the green and leafs left the roots for microbes to feed on an cover the soil for a week or two with a black fabric or a thick layer of mulch

U can also make a small area for decompose ....... Veggie and fruits peels ... It's work like fertilizer....

4:15 Your compost looks amazing!

Maybe you can try to use pick to break the soil .. easier than shovel 😊

You need to buy a Wolf to chase off the deers.

I just planted kale and tomatoes and I'm excited to see how big they get

more sunflowers in the empty spots please 😊

Loveyou msm

Lupins can actually be good for the soil because they gather nitrogen which is vital for plant growth. (Every plant needs different amounts though)

Hi Kristina I have been following you since 1 year now I found you in my suggestions as I watch a lot of videos on invironmental issues and also many physics related videos ,from few nights 8 have been thinking what career should I choose and what subjects should I take because I am very interested both in physics and environment studies and both of the subjects ate very different and I'm interested in both of them equally and can't let go of either of them I will be very thankful if you could help me out on what I should do. Thankyou

Which book is best known for wildlife (animal) and which can be easily available in store?

Merime