We Built NEW Garden Beds in Rock Hard Soil
In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes documents a family garden‑building day on their homestead. After borrowing a walking tractor with a rotary plow, the crew tackles a 100‑foot stretch of compacted, rock‑hard soil to create new permaculture garden beds. Rhodes explains why this is the only time they will till the land, reviews past guidance from Master Gardener Casey Ostwitch, and debates whether to use a rotary plow, broadfork, or hand‑shaping given the pigs’ previous soil disturbance. The team clears silage tarps, marks bed lines, and uses sandbags to hold the soil while they plow, creating deep, loose beds ready for cover crops. Family members (Jonah, Josiah, Henry, Becky, Papa, etc.) help with equipment, hauling, and marking, while the host narrates the learning curve of operating the tractor, the mechanics of gear, PTO, and throttle. He also outlines future tasks: covering beds with tarps, planting fruit trees before spring, integrating chickens and high‑tunnel gardening, composting, and possibly adding a horse. The video blends practical how‑to instruction, permaculture planning, and personal reflections on the challenges and satisfaction of building new beds on difficult ground.
Chapters
Keep going! Keep going! Get beat! Keep going! No, keep going! Happy day! Happy day! It is garden build day! You nervous as I am? No, he's just wanting to find his bulldozer. You're gonna bulldozer while I rotary plow this garden? I'm gonna help you. Oh right, all right. Today I am excited. We've borrowed a walking tractor from a friend. We have to prepare new garden beds. This is, as permaculturalists, this is the only time we'll till or plow. In this case, just to break new ground. Mmm, get this bed shaped for us. Okay guys, please. The second most dramatic of all animals. You even have food. It's the cat. This is gonna be a day I just want to be trying out this machine because there's still— I still have a lot of questions. I've never done this on my own. I've looked up some YouTube videos. I've had Master Gardener here, Casey Ostwich, actually do this in 2018, but that's been a long time ago. We are on a diverse homestead. We have to replace 6 of our fruit trees. I mean, out of 60 or so, that's not bad, especially since they were just beginning. Uh, beautiful one said, well, when are we going to plant these? Well, we need to plant these before spring. She said at least find out if there's any instructions. I got to plant these before spring, and I have to till this garden to get it back to my friend. And also, you know, we want, we want to prep it and then cover it with silage tarps for a couple of weeks to kill any weeds. This, this moving of the soil, it's going to cause— it's going to aerate it and it's going to cause a lot of these seeds to get going, germinate. I'm gonna say we're still okay because this is still moist. Just maybe if we can get— what do you want to talk— plot 1 and 2? Gotta have better names for this. You want to call it the pig garden? If we can get the pig garden done today, we could plant these. I won't be able to plow in the high tunnel today because, well, I just wanted to do one thing at a time. The chickens are in there, so if all goes well right there, we're extending the garden. These are our current gardens. We're going to extend out here, and if all goes well here, tomorrow we'll do in the high tunnel, which is a different challenge altogether. Okay, let's not get crocs. Yes, I want this. You love crocs. When it's 34 degrees outside, you love Crocs. You've outgrown the Crocs, buddy. I know, but your feet's too big. Are those gonna work for you or we need to find your boots? No, they won't. Gideon, your shoes are right here. Okay, well, I don't see your rubber boots. I don't see your cowboy boots, but you're saying the Crocs work. Have you found your bulldozer? What's wrong? She's kicking me. Who's kicking you? Vanilla. Hey, she doesn't like to be milked from the other side. We did it yesterday. Oh, okay. She won't let me. All right, okay. Weaning Honey— not weaning, drying her off. She was producing so little, we're gonna let her put it all into the calf now. We gave her a treatment before we dried her off. Why don't you do the other chores while he does that? He did them. Okay. What happened here? I left it here. No, right here. Okay, ready? You got your truck? You got your Jeep? Okay. Papa, what that book? What there? Papa, what there in the stall? I know, right? Hey, let's hurry and do the pigs and chickens so that we can start on this rotary job. Okay, do you want to drive and get it, or do I need to go with you? Move the bucket. I'll move the bucket. You go get it. Okay. All right, he goes with me, so I'll go with him. Where are you going? It's this way, isn't it? Oh, there's the bulldozer right there. Yeah, try again. She wouldn't do it. No, she did, but she got me so dirty. Well, we lost Henry to the boredom and to the, uh, cold weather. I think we gotta prep down all the way to here. We're kind of prepped right there. There's some spots unprepped. Don't know how that's gonna go. I like zero experience when we're running one of these machines myself. Can you guys relate? You know, the feeling going into a project, running something new for the first time. There's two things to machine work, like rotary plowing or like grading. You got to know how to run the machines, which we don't— I mean, barely, barely. But then you got to know what to do. So with this garden plot I was watching an old video of my buddy Casey Oswitch, and he was rotary plow the whole thing to break the ground. It's not sod like this because the pigs have already worked it. So do we rotary till the whole thing and then, you know, mark the beds and then hand shovel it? Or because the pigs went ahead of us, come down here and use that rotary plow as a bed shaper and just pull material out of where the paths are going to be and onto the bed? The problem with that, the pigs teal, but they didn't plow, so it's pretty hard surface. We want roots to be able to penetrate. So you see, like right here, I mean, this is hard as concrete. We might can, uh, do a broadfork. We'll see how hard that's going to be. If it's going to be hard, really hard to broadfork beds, we're probably going to rotary plow this whole thing. Pigs still help tremendously because you— can you imagine if this was sod? Get a little smell just from 24 hours. Come here, come here, show you. Show them that a 10-year-old can do this. You grab some wood chips. Hey, you You did it! Good job, bud. See that fat turd right there? Let's get it covered. In here is a different story. It is rock solid material on top. We have, we have material that we took out, but it was only from half this size, so it would be spread pretty thin to go over the whole thing. So it'd probably be a very shallow bed. And then, and I'm definitely not gonna be able to broadfork this. Man, it's tough. If I shape these beds, then we gotta wheelbarrow the material in so we don't destroy the beds. Or do we put that material down and then mix it in? Mixing it in is not that great. It's better to layer materials on top. We could haul that material in, spread it out somewhat evenly, and then make beds mixing it in. I realize a lot of this talk probably doesn't make sense to you. Well, some of it doesn't even make sense to me, so don't worry about it. Beefcake, I got a bonus. Nothing goes to waste on the permaculture homestead. The pigs did an amazing job clearing this sod. Not only are they garbage disposals, they're tillers. What is this? I'm just putting a double-handed gun out of here. What's it gonna do? What do you mean double-handed gun? I want to put it on the side by side. Oh, what's all this? That's just to cover the handle up and put the battery in there. Okay. Are you gonna be my work crew today? Yep. I guess. Let's see if all is good, all is calm. Guys got to eat breakfast. Maybe I could get over there and figure some things out before you come jonesing to get to work. He doesn't like the thinking part of the process. How is it? It's peaceful in here. Who's on the garden building adventure with me today? Me. Nothing. Yeah, you can pick up after the kitchen. Lily's water's leaking. Why is it leaking? The drain pipe. The drain pipe's leaking? Well, there's no place you can turn on and off. It's just drip, drip, drip, drip. Okay, hopefully I can just tighten it up. Josiah, what are you gonna do for project today? You gonna help build the garden? Sort of. Well, I got two mighty men coming to help me build the garden, Becky. Okay, well, that was a good setup. I think Henry wants me to take him with me. Hey, right? Yeah, you— there, somebody makes an implement that you can put on it, make little round bales. You know that massive field across the creek now, Papa? What if that was just our hay field? Yeah, and we figured out another place for Lily's horse ring. Well, that's kind of good for a, uh, luchador too, though. Yeah, but what if we figure out another I've ever lived in here. What if we figured out another solution and made that a hayfield? If we cut it 3 times in a year— well, you want to rotate it. That's the thing. You want to, you want to graze it with animals so it gets— you give back. You don't want to just take hay. So your hayfield's rotating. That would be your hayfield one year, and your hayfield's over there next year. Okay, are you coming? Where's your sweater? Where's your sweater? All right, come on. Where's your boots now? Can you run get them? There's rubber boots. Can you carry them down there? You run get his boots, bring them to him. Y'all meet me at the garden where you're gonna bulldoze. When are we gonna go to this horse ring with the panels? You want to do it? Okay, well, I've got to get this garden built. We've got to mark the property before leaves start growing. Gotta plant these trees. So I guess her horse ring is kind of fourth on the priority there. Okay, I was hoping you'd miss me. You want me to put your legs on right? Yeah, what am I gonna do without these kids? I'm not gonna have any content left. Not fun and entertaining. I guess maybe I'll have, uh, grandkids by then. See, Jonah's 17. Did you guys see the podcast we did with Ben and Meg here on YouTube? Well, she was 19 when they first had kids. Ben was 20. So I could have grandkids in 2 to 3 years. Step into my office today. It's a first time for everything. I'm gonna try to enjoy this. I'm trying not to be stressed about it. Too blessed to be stressed. You only get to build new garden beds once. Neutral. You ready? Yeah, let's put it in third gear. You're in neutral. Throttle it. This is— hold on, let's see. Okay, the park's off. Who's that? It's John. Oh, uh, that throttles it up, but that, that, that only raises your engine. You're still not in gear yet. Okay, here, I'll show you. Pull down on that. Uh-huh. Pull up on that and then throttle. Keep your hand Of course the boys like to garden when we got a new machine. Don't hit the button. How do you steer? Do I like this? No, that's it. What do these do? This is forward. That's reverse. This is neutral. And then this is reverse. And that's the brake. We should have started it in neutral. No, this is— this, this, this lets you move this around. Oh. So if you want to run it like this, this is your PTO. We'll push that forward. I think this flips this. I don't know if we'll ever need that. This is your speed, you know that. It's your parking brake. That's your off. Did you turn that off or did I have to turn it off? I turned it off. You figured it out. Okay, what we have to do, let's get all the sandbags off. You help us, Jonah. Get them further up. We're gonna go right here. We have to break new ground right here. So step one, We're uncovering the silage tarp. Hopefully kept it from growing things and kept the ground supple after the pigs killed it. Get the bags further away. You know, we're gonna have to turn around. We're gonna go a little further than we need to. Come on, good job. Henry, what are you doing? See? Grass under here. That's why we— one reason we need to do this now, because this needs to get shaped, tarp, and then tarp for at least 2 weeks if not longer. Should have done this in the fall, but we were getting— we were getting exploded. Okay, one thing we could do, you start right here. We're gonna have to get a— we're gonna have to get some sort of string to give you guys a marker. Let me till it up, Papa, with this and then you guys make the beds. That's the other option. It's probably the better option. Hold on. The problem with just making a row is we're still going to have firm ground, and if you plow the whole area, everything will make— everything will be softened. Do we use this compost right there? Here? Probably not. I'd say we add that compost to that pile. Look how rich this ground is compared to the high tunnel. We need as much good soil in the high tunnel as we can get, don't you think? Okay, well, that's funny. I don't know, that was half of it. That was for 50 feet. Now we have 100 feet. It feels so terrible that we're taking so much of our pasture. Yeah, and let me tell you this, per square foot you're going to get more out of garden than anything else. We're going to keep adding pasture. Does that make you feel better? That's not even worked, so this is the best. This is the best. Get way here. You gotta get— you gotta start way back here. You gotta go straight as possible. Hey, want to go deeper? It's important to go straight because it's how the rest of it goes. What's that smell? I don't know. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. There you go. That's it. You turn it around and you put your flap, this part in that hole you just made. No, you put your wheel in it. Are we out of fuel? No. What happened? You didn't throttle it. I think we're out of fuel. Oh, you know what? We were supposed to put the right wheel in this. No, I tried that and that didn't work. All right, I'm hoping that's what our problem is. I wish they'd look at a video. I've looked at them. Why don't y'all look at a video while I go? I could find that video I did with Casey so long ago. I reviewed the video. That wheel on our furrow. Furrow. We got to empty two beds. Yeah, that's giving us a big furrow in the middle, and this way we're not throwing soil on top of un-filled ground. Keep going, keep going. You can even run over a little bit of the onions. You got to keep going. I think this is an old pig in the paddock is what that smell is. What's that Yep. Now repeat, do the same thing. I think we got it. Yeah, really rich soil compared to what we're going to face in a high tunnel. It's working fantastically. Look at this, look how soft. Oh my gosh, it's so soft, it's amazing. Probably 6, 8, 10 inches. It's working great. It's just very rich soil. Jonah had to leave though, he had to go, uh, he was loving it, he didn't want to leave, but he's got to do his his, uh, online lessons. So John, yeah, film me for a second, buddy. We got half of what we wanted to get plowed today done. It's only 10 o'clock. I think we can get to the other half. We're gonna see. We got some idle boys here. Only one person can really run the machine. So it'd be really neat if we could get some guys on shaping these beds with shovels. Nothing? Uh, why don't y'all drive down and see if your grandpa has something we can borrow? Can't find our flat shovel. So embarrassing. Oh wow, look at that guy ride! My new fun You know, I'm in my 40s. Well, he's 4. This is his fun. We're gonna have fun with you for a second. Shaping beds could come tomorrow. I mean, we could, we could till all the, all the grounds and then get the machine back theoretically and shape the beds in a little bit. And that's what we'll do. It's just we have some boys, nothing to do right now. On the mark, get set, go! Whoa, you're as fast as me now! Here's my corner. I'm pretty sure I got these T-posts straight when I did this. We'll go off these T-posts, so if they're in a line, we can keep this in a line and get straight out through there. What? Can I try to pin on it? Sure. Okay, can you ride it down that? There you go. Wow! There you go. Where do you want me to put it? Right there? Okay, I'll have to spot you down it. Did you get one? Yeah, you did? Heck yeah! They found some shovels. Two very capable boys will stay busy. As soon as I get this one going, y'all, I'm gonna— y'all are going to town. I'll keep— and I'll keep plowing. I stretched my line out. You think you got it straight, you can double check. We can go off something else. I'm off a little bit. Looks like I need to go— looks like I need to go more towards the high tunnel. Josiah thinks I'm too close to the high tunnel. So what we can do is we can measure off the high tunnel here and take that measurement, and that's our solid one. The red mark plus the black one, 9'4". Okay, Henry, get off the line. So that looks better there. Well, I mean Okay, if it goes to right there— okay, the tarp goes too far. Shovel this side of it over. Yep, you're creating a 30-inch bed right here. Try not to get it on that line. So now it's super supple because we've plowed it. That's pleasurable, isn't it, Josiah? This marks our bed. Feel free to dig deep, make a deep bed since we have all this loose soil. Go way down. All right, there's good. This is one of the most satisfying things in gardening or homesteading, is walking away from newly shaped beds with a tarp over it. Here, you want over? 1, 2, 3. Good boy. Okay boys, it's almost— you know, we've got 30 minutes until we got to be done. It's gonna rain, so unfortunately we're gonna have to cover these. Okay, till tomorrow. Josiah, we need to use the tarps long ways because it won't be enough again to go across because there's too much undulation. We have 100-foot long tarp, so we don't need 100 feet, so we're gonna have to fold it back over on So actually, it looks like we got some rain coming in right now. We want to cover it. Not that the rain would hurt it per se, it's just we're going to shape it. We need it to stay— I mean, it's not, it's not perfectly dry right now. It's actually perfect. It's just a little moist, not too dry. Donna definitely has to get finished because you do not want to plow in the, in wet soil. We're going gonna need a third tarp. Don't know if we're— we're not going to finish this. We're not going to add on to this trellis this year. This is a re-cover year. We might plant this eventually. We're gonna have a whole trellis along this whole thing. We're gonna rake that plant, right? I'll go get that. We have uncovered this garden bed because we needed that silage tarp. Mother Nature is is modest. It needs to be covered. Let's do something about that. Summer cover crop, that's not what we're looking for. Winter rye, that's what I'm looking for. Those luminous clouds are right over us now. Down this to a very shallow rake. Just a bit of winter rye. That rain coming in will be good for this. I'm going to start cover cropping more as opposed to the silage tarp. Problem is, how do you work it back in? I don't want to get a— I don't want to get a BCS. They're like $5,000 plus. Implements are crazy. You can work it back in there with a flail mower, but— oh wow, it's starting to rain. I think I have some ideas though for chickens without tearing up the bed bed. Let's say we let our rye grow up, we'll cut it down by hand or with a string trimmer and then run chickens on it with a special cage. I got some ideas that's coming. Hang with— hang tight, hang tight. Not in this video, future video. Let's get those, uh, sandbags up and put them on this. Okay, rain is coming. It is right over us. It was sprinkling a little bit. Hey Jonah, come on, let's get these, uh, sandbags down on it. I did it! You guys have no idea. I sweated over this, fretted over this, researching this this morning, just jonesing to get out there. It actually couldn't have went any better. I was I was ready to do that all day long, but we got that done in half a day. I guess you weren't. Good job, Mom, we got it done. He took over the machine, ran the machine. But you guys didn't shape the beds, you just got it tilled. We have to shape with it by hand. We decided to shape by hand. It's going fine, isn't it? Tomorrow we're gonna get the chickens out of there, move all the bedding out of there, get the chickens on the compost, get the bedding on the compost. Is this your getting compost dance? So this is your chicken making compost, baby. We're gonna put all the material from the high tunnel back in there, spread it out, and then, uh, I need to look at my seed time, but I'm pretty sure we're close to needing to start peppers, cheese, tomatoes. See, strong. But we gotta get the chickens out of there, get this covered. In April we can put them in the greenhouse. All right, we're gonna have to order some silage tarps from Farmer's Friends. Maybe get 4 of those, and then we got to get weed fabric too. But I mean, not right now if you've got it about to go. Oh my word, that's right, we're gonna go look at a possible horse for you. Okay, you don't want to miss tomorrow. Putting the chickens on compost, uh, build more beds, go and look at a horse. All right, thanks for joining us today. See you tomorrow. Happy day!
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