Main takeaway from this video is that I need a bigger garden

This is a perfect allegory against perfectionism. The lessons here extend beyond gardening

For what it’s worth, thank you for all of your videos. I actually took up gardening this year thanks to coming across one of your videos. You struck gardening fever in me 😂. So much still to learn from you but I’m enjoying it. Also here’s an old saying my mom told me: “One for the mouse, one for the crow. One to wither and one to grow”

I pulled a bunch of celery and what did I discover: rabbit fur covering 2 baby bunnies under another celery plant. I left them alone and 10 days later they were gone.

If we only have 10% loss, we should probably consider ourselves fortunate. There was an old English planting rhyme: "one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow" which implies a 75% failure rate for planting from seeds.

"I'll still eat it, doesn't matter, I'm friends with birds." LOL

I grow enough to share, but still, when I see a squirrel hauling off a whole 12 inch broccoli plant!

"I'm friends with birds" I really did LOL

Oh. My. Lord. This really did change the way I see my garden. Thank you for making this

Do you have a birdbath? It has been found you get a huge reduction in damage to grapes in vineyards when birds have easy access to water, that might be why they are going after the strawberries. That berry didn't look like the bird made a serious attempt to eat it.

I have a small four square (2-4X4 and 2-4X6) garden so my loss is more like 25% but I enjoy the process so much that I'm happy for what I do get to harvest. One of my strategies is to plant a few plants in different areas. I may have cucumbers growing up a trellis on the fence and some on the side of a bed, some basil around the tomatoes and some in a container, zucchini in a bed and a couple in with the perennials. Chances are I will get some of each. I always have enough food for my small family and some to give away and I consider that a success! Thanks for the reminder!

The birds in our area must have gotten the equation wrong; they ate 90% of our plums yesterday. If they only saw your video first... 😂

While I completely agree with 10% or even a bit more... Deer will mow everything down once they find your garden!

I never regret getting lost in these videos for an hour or so. I learn so much!

Love the new intro B roll Luke! I built chicken wire boxes to keep rodents from eating my leafy greens and young sprouts. Wasn’t very costly and helps keep them out of a specific area rather than keeping them out of everything.

Hi there Luke. Birds that eat your strawberries and tomatoes may just be need a drink. A great decoy is a bird bath with clean water or a bird waterer. Just an idea. Love your show. I am an old/ new gardener...back after raising a family and working. Thank you for all of your great tips. It's very helpful.

So, sounds like the rule is--grow enough to share with the pests! I don’t like that rule, but hey whatever works...☺️

This is genius and takes so much stress out of gardening. I garden for me and garden for the environment. 10% is what a religious person is advised to tithe (donate) from their income to a church. I am not religious but love the parallel here.

My Southern peas had aphids. I let them be. Now I have a huge population of ladybugs. I even have ladybug nymphs. It’s so cool.

Thanks for this video. Last year I invested in The dear fence. This year I’m dealing with chipmunks, moles and groundhogs! I was feeling so disheartened but this video really helped. I did lose some crops, but you are right... I still have a lot more garden growing strong!

My tiny garden (60 sqft) has some success right now because I have sacrificial plants in it (quite by accident!). The plants I really want are beautiful and the plants I can do without are deeeelicious to the pests. I learned this year that I will purposefully plant sacrificial plants so my favorites escape pests! Good topic today, Luke!

Marigolds planted EVERY WHERE!! They really cut down on the bad bugs and seem to help with other critters.

"Mouse in your house" Dr.Seuss 😂

We lost 80 percent of our massive garden to to grasshoppers and another 15 percent to deer… it was my first garden in this area and never struggle with a garden like I did here!!! I’m feeling so defeated and scared to try again this year.. 😢 It was massive and I even planted a large amount of sunflowers too!!! They got it all!!!

This is so amazing that today you loaded this video. I was just complaining to my husband earlier this week about the deer, rabbits, insect pests, and diseases that I have to compete against every year. It appears to be something different every year. That said, this makes a lot of sense. Where I lived before, I had to deal with the deer and groundhogs. The soil was excellent. This new location has bad soil, so we had to go with raised beds. Thanks so much for making this video.

Good way of looking at it . I still dont want the birds eating my peppers .lol .

Enjoyed this video. Fenced last year because a few deer eating in the garden was one thing, but the herd grew. I thought maybe the garden was too big but I filled it and thought I had too many peppers, but one 4x8 bed of them are just not thriving....but we have another doing great. To your point!

You're speaking our language! Can't wait to check out more of your videos on specific pests! We've got a lot of specific videos but you are right..there are so many different pests it could be overwhelming if not having a good plan or vision for your garden. Cheers!

I’m totally diggin your intro music, with the close up views of your plants!! LOVE IT!! 💗

It's really my first year planting a HUGE garden and this is exactly what I did! They're going really hard at the cauliflower but leaving the broccoli alone! Thanks Luke!! Always great info!!!

I found a lot of times birds and pests bite something because they are thirsty. Putting out water throughout my garden has really helped cut down on some of the fruit damage.

I always plant a "diversion crop", that I weaken intentionally to be nomzed.

I live in zone 5 b, which has been scorching 🥵 hot this year. Literally, in May and June, with a consistent almost 100 degree average days and I can’t even remember the last rain we had. Usually we have 80 degree temps in June, with rain every few days, at least, so this has been a crazy year already. First I had plants suffering from late frost. Managed to save all but one. Replanted that. Then a big wind storm with sideline winds took out my cucumbers, which were about 8 inches tall, so I had to re-plant ALL of those, from seed, because by this time, all local greenhouses were sold out of cucumber plants. Then the horrendous heat and gross humidity, wreaked havoc on my tender young pepper plants. I plant many varieties, and none did better than another. I think some were just more mature plants, so I was able to so far, save half of those, and I’ve re-planted the other half. Now late Summer here, my peppers🌶 always endure high heat and humidity, but they’re very mature plants by then, basically, small trees, so that’s definitely the difference I noticed. This is my 8th year gardening in this city, and zone, and I’ve NEVER had to re-plant anything, until this year. I’ve dealt with many different crazy weather situations, pest situations, but this is the first for 100 degree temps at the end of May, and throughout June! It’s been an adventure! I tend to my garden several times a day too. So I do my very best, and regardless, I love it!! 🤷🏻‍♀️👌🌷🍅🐛🌻🥵🍀🌶

I am a gardener (30X150) AND a cash crop/Dairy farmer. While I like Luke ( and this video) I can tell you WITH ASSURANCE that farmers will NOT tell you they are hoping for a 90% yield. We hope for 100%. True story

I am really enjoying your videos! You know so much about gardening, and I am just starting out, so your knowledge and the way you share it is amazing - your aquarium analogy rings very true for me, thanks for putting in the time and effort to make these videos!!!

I always direct sow some lettuce around my container garden I have out front (I have a garden in the back one bed is 144sqft and second bed 80 sqft and I net about 120sqft of planting space) but in the front those low containers I have of lettuces garlics potato bags and kale dont get eaten by the bunnies bc they go eat the direct sown lettuce plants I scatter in our landscaped area. Idea started out when a few black seeded Simpson's volunteered on the landscaped flower and bush beds that I have my container plants near. It turned out to be a great idea!

Loosing all eggplants so far to small black insect. Dawn and water mix not helping. separating them to see if one of 12 plants make it. Birds eat the bugs. Organic gardening and having nature help out makes it more worth while. Thanks. Great video.

Also, as I usually do, have a backup system. Have a couple of flats of starts to replace those plants that get damaged. I even have had an entire beet patch nibbled down to the ground. About 50% of them are starting to come up again. I`m watering them well and expect to harvest the leaves in a week since I grow beets primarily for the leaves anyway.

Thank you Luke, makes me feel better about loosing a few plants to squirrels.

Love these tips! Next year - larger garden! ♡♡

I'm all for co-existing with nature. Tbh I'm looking forward to sharing some of my harvest with the birds. :) We're at a point where we need to help nature a little (or a lot).

I'm so glad to have found your channel, for all your videos and information that you share. I have learned so much and I'm still learning. Thank you so much.

Oo that new intro is hawt my man. Thanks for helping me have a beautiful garden this year. I'm growing 15 different plants I've never grown before! Thanks!

Thanks for the tip! Great concept

Thank you I appreciate your logic. It helps me to relax and take my time a plant a smarter backyard garden.

I love your channel! Thanks for always explaining things so well. I have a fish tank too so that analogy made a lot of sense.

I love how informational your videos are. Thanks for the good stuff!

Hey Luke, love the channel! What should I use for bugs? I have no deer, moles or mice. I have beetles eating my green bean leaves, white flies and tomato horn worms. Thanks!

My pepper seeds I got from you just sprouted :D

We applied this to our garden this year!!

Next year, I will plant rows of things verses 4 or 5 squash plants. My thoughts were, they produce a lot and we don't need to be over run with squash but between squash borers and Alabama heat/humidity causing disease, I lost them all! Luckily I saw this coming and have 5 more already about to start producing!

Good video, lots of useful tips about pest control. Plants lots of different crops, plant them in different way in different locations, and something will survive. The analogy about the salt-water tank is really great. It's the same reason that a few aphids can be devastating to an indoor orchid in a small pot. Those same aphids wouldn't survive ten minutes in a highly biodiverse large organic garden. Sometimes I get aphids or spider mites on my potted citrus trees when they are indoors in Dec-Feb. All I have to do is take them outside for a few minutes and pretty soon the ladybeetles and wasps swoop in and eat all the pests. I used to have pest problems when I had a few tiny raised beds. Now I have an unruly jungle food forest where most crops just reseed themnselves now, there's weeds everywhere, food everywhere, predators and natural enemies everywhere, and no more pest issues. I found a large turtle eating my purple kohlrabi yesterday. I helped him out and harvested a few plants and cut them up for him. :P. Also, some pests are just free protein. Squirrels and rabbits eating your carrots, now there's some meat for the carrot stew. Even aphids are fine to eat, just extra sugar and protein. Happy gardening and cheers.

I did this out of frustrated determination this year. Last year didn’t go well because I planted a few varieties of types of food in my small garden space. Disease and pests pretty much ate up all my production. So this year, I said f it. I planted tons of everything all in different areas of my garden space, around my house, in my yard. I figured certain plants of the same variety will get different sun exposure and also different pests. So - I gave a big thumb in the eye to last year. This year - EVERYTHING I have planted is growing massively. So far, so good.

Your strawberries look great. How do you prepare that bed to keep on producing for next year. Any tips would be appreciated. Thank you

"you need a bigger garden" *looks at migarderner seed store* still no seeds *continues crying to water small garden*

Helpful reminder. Thank you for the education. :)

I'm so glad you ate that strawberry! I've been dealing with the same thing and I wasn't sure if it was safe to eat!! Thanks!

Thank you, this is a great video.

My dad and I do this. Good idea

I’m in Australia and have a bush turkey that comes into my garden every day to eat my passion fruit and dig up my seeds. My two year old loves it 😂

Would you recommend using fresh coconut water as a natural fertilizer for plants? I havent found any info out there. Thank you.

Love the videos they helps alot

Great information. Thank you for sharing. I have never heard of this golden rule in the past. I will be using this information in the future. God bless America. Bye the way, what is a good type of lettuce for hot, humid areas. I love lettuce and I would love to grow any type of lettuce in The Philippine Islands.

I'm glad to see you eat the strawberry... I tell my kids the animals are just telling us when it's ripe

Thank you, it makes perfect sense.

I know this is an old video but was wondering about getting rid of slugs. I tried DE,slug pellets,picking by hand,YUCK & they over took all my leafy vegetables.Do you have any tips.Also squash bugs,I’m about to give up since I’m losing the battle. Any help would be appreciated. PsLove your channel,just subscribed

Always helpful Luke, thanks!

Soooooo helpful. Thank you! Just as I lost my mind to mice eating my green beans. This helps a lot!

LOL. For me it’s 90% for the squirrels and 10% for us. They even kill plants they don’t like, so we plant another.

I pay maybe 20$ twice a year on benifitial insects . Green lacewings in the spring and lady beetles midsummer. Both seem to stay and reproduce

Thanks so much for that advice🤦‍♀️

Great gardening advice. I just saw borage in your beautiful garden. Couldn't find any locally and ordered seeds from the other side of the world. Not sure when they will get here.

I use the "bird strawberries" for jam. Just pick them, freeze them, then toss them in the pot when you're ready to make the jam. I also pick close to ripe instead of ripe- the pill bugs and birds definitely prefer a perfect strawberry over underripe. So I let them ripen on the counter!

Our HOA only allows 100 sq feet of vegetable gardening. In trying to plant variety, if any of our local critters decide to feast, it’s easy to lose all of what you plant. The deer got the peppers, the rabbits ate the cabbage and broccoli, and two of my tomato plants have curly top virus. The onions and garlic are doing well, and I have some lettuce in a planter on the deck that is doing fine. How do you recommend planting out a small space for max results?

the thumbs-down are from people with patio Gardens like me LOL

excellent idea thx

I'll still eat it! I have too use a bunch of shade cloth because I'm in Arizona which helps greatly with pests and sun burning.

Does anyone have any decent suggestions for treating leaf miners? Having trouble with them specifically on my Swiss shard ... and they also seem to love my Compadre Hybrid jalapeno plant leaves for some reason (literally the only pepper variety I've found little white-specked larvae on). Only solution has been to diligently check every leaf literally every morning, removing the baddies/damaged leaves, and then spraying with a neem/veg/soap/water solution but it's not exactly practical. Thanks!

Makes total sense. The hard part is the starting point for a beginner that has small garden Not yet established, and the coming years of perrinial plants will help greatly in that 10% battle.

Oh, Luke, you are too cute! You eating the strawberry shared with the bird is so exactly what I would do. Hey, "I'm friends with birds", too. LOL Loved this episode; gave me a new twist on things.

I love the new intro (visual/audio) and topic!!! Very classy intro.

A question. Luke states we should prune the lower leaves off zucchini to allow air flow under the plant and it allows the pollinators to find the flowers easier. As I watched his video of him doing it appeared to me he just breaks/cuts the stalk which has the leaf to be removed. Does this pruning allow those squash worms (I forgot the proper their name) to get to the root easier or do they just go straight to to root stem? This is the first garden I planted since moving to FL from MI; I’ve never had worms in my zucchini plants before.

I saw you would paint stones & place them out early, do you think that works? If so, curious if you could give a % estimate on how much it helps if any :)

Hello I have some big large cucumber plants and I found a leaf with yellow spots I can't buy nothing yet on a pink a dime with virus what home stuff can I use plz help

Thank you for sharing ❤️💗❤️

What do you recommend to get rid of squash beetles

Me too. I share with the birds. I provide water, food and shelter to the birds. We love to see them in our garden. The only thing I dont like is the little slugs that ate 50% of our strawberries. Any sugestion on how to get them out of my strawberries. I only have one bedraise of strawberries made with Concrete blocks.

Perfect timing. The Colorado potato Beetle is just crazy in my garden right now. I bet I’ve hand picked 100 larva in the last week. Every day or 2 there are a bunch crawling around eating my plants. I found a few adults, and I’ve removed a bunch of eggs, but they keep showing up. And they grow fast.

I need help.I am going courgettes and noticing big problems the courgettes are growing very slowly and turning yellow they stay small and just drop off most before pollinating. Once I have pollinated grow to about 5 cm then die and drop do you have any ideas I’m at a loss.?🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Love the intro!

Really enjoyed the garden pics at the beginning.

I accepted this rule since the beginning in my garden lol. Kinda went with a permaculture method so I would not have to get upset about having weeds or a messy garden either lol.

I grow in containers. So far, I've had a couple rabbits get a hold of a couple pumpkins. I've put up some netting to fix the problem. Still have 1 rabbit, a cat got the other, but the rabbit doesn't come in my backyard anymore. As for bugs, I've been spraying Sevin on my yard, neem oil on the plant and using cedar shavings as mulch. The mix have been keeping insects out of the garden for the most part. I'm glad I haven't seen squash bugs. Last year I had them bad. Lost a lot of crops from them

In eastern Nebraska 5B just noticed micro flying bugs around my tomatoes and peas both trellis both 4’ now wondering if white flies. What I’ve read talks about size in mm which means nothing to me. They are so small and fast I can’t get a pic with my phone

I like you more after you ate that strawberry. nice vid. thanks!

Good perspective in theory, but who has so much cultivated space to have so much allotment to each thing you are growing. This requires maintenance, irrigation, fertilizing, weeding, and overall tending and $$$$$ and most people have jobs and other responsibilities, and like me no finances to install irrigation or buy soil nutrients, so I have a small garden. I was mindful of my tomato plants and overnight, I found 5 hornworms which I removed that morning and by the next day one was munching on a tomato after eating all the blooms. I swear I looked closely at the plant, but its such a discouraging thing, the plant is already yellowing from the bottom, and well it all sounds good but in actuality it can be very distressing, even after gardening over 45 years!!! But I do learn a lot from you and appreciate your expertise and teaching style.

Great point! Its the 80/20 rule . Problem is when you don't have space for more and you only have a few plants and they are getting attacked! Love your videos!

Any suggestions for saving blueberries from birds and squirrels? I don't mind sharing, but the critters start eating when the berries are barely blushing pink. Netting helps some, hanging old video game disks/pie pans is ineffective. And six bushes is all I can afford to plant, spacewise.

I'm losing some of my bok choy to some pest but even though I only have a small garden and a few bok choy, your rule of 10 percent actually works! I would just like to know who is eating my bok choy, I'm really curious.

The beds that I have planted nasturtium in have no pests. My other beds have pests🙄