 this chamomile free, this artichoke free, this oregano free, this asparagus free, this fig In my last video I made a promise. I made a promise that I would show you how to build a food force for free and guys I failed. Hey Permanents, Matt here bringing you permaculture experiments like trying to build this food force for free and grow 100% of my food after 13 months without income and this week I need to ride a rock. In my last video I promised to show you both cheap and free ways to get plants for your food forest but really only managed to show you the cheap ways to get plants. This week I'm doubling down and giving a tour of the things in the food forest and my nursery which I have acquired 100% for free and I'm going to share 10 of the techniques I've used to make it happen and if you stay tuned to the end of the video I'm going to share two bonus techniques that you can use to get free plants out of things you probably already have laying around and even get free plants from the government. Let's go! Okay so don't actually steal plants but check your local laws. In many places plants that hang over sidewalks or roadways or or otherwise in public spaces are 100% legal to harvest from. This rosemary right here it was growing outside of a big box store so I just ripped off a piece brought it home dropped it in a cup of water and within a few weeks it had grown roots and now I have rosemary 100% for free. Mints are another one that frequently escape people's yards and be found growing in public spaces free for the taking. I've also managed to snatch quints, sumac and several other seeds just by collecting them from plants that are growing in public spaces. Somebody in your neighborhood probably has plants that they want to get rid of or at least they're willing to part with for a little bit of labor. I found an ad on Craigslist where somebody was so overwhelmed by the rosemary patch they just want somebody to come dig them up. That's where these guys came from. I also had a neighbor offer me asparagus crowns as long as I was willing to dig them up and if I wasn't already swimming in asparagus I would have taken them up on that. Some of my other favorite places to find plants seeking a new home are Facebook, Freecycle and my personal favorite the Rooster.co although that one's currently only available in parts of Oregon California and Texas. There's some overlap between this next technique and technique number one except that technique number one really more focuses on the urban and suburban environments that have been shaped by humans whereas this technique takes us more into the wild spaces. I frequently forage for fruit, nuts, mushrooms and greens while I'm out hiking but more and more recently I've been looking out for plants that I can bring home with me. Frequently that's in the form of nuts and seeds like these walnuts that I have stratifying in my fridge but the next time I hit up my favorite berry picking spot I'm going to be bringing home some thimbleberries. Whether they're wild native or naturalized plants or just domesticated plants that have escaped the garden you might already have plants on your site that would be excellent additions to the food forest if only they were in an easier spot to harvest. Here's some wild chamomile often referred to by the common name pineapple weed and it makes an excellent and relaxing tea that I love to have as I'm winding down for bed. The problem that I had last year was remembering where all of the plants were and it was a ton of hiking to get around to them for just a really modest harvest. That's why I decided it would be best just to transplant them as I found them into a centralized location for harvest. These elders were also volunteers that I transplanted into the food forest and even though I'm mostly using them as chop and drop they also have edible catkins and cambium and they can be tapped for syrup just like maples are and if you're in the U.S. or Canada there are hundreds or thousands of plants that were consumed by the natives before the Europeans invaded and many of them are still growing all around us. I recently found an old USDA publication from 1936 which compiles 80 years of research about the foods of the native peoples of the U.S. and Canada and I'm including a link to that PDF down in the description so that you can find some things that might be growing around you. Gardeners are a giving bunch and if you become our friends it's only a matter of time before we start sending you home with plants. These goji berry cuttings are from a plant that I originally received from a friend from whom I also received Columbines, horseradish and a number of other plants. I'm also frequently both giving and receiving seeds that me and my friends have collected. Make friends with your local gardeners and it's just a matter of time before you're bringing home free plants. Before we go on to technique number six I want to talk to you about something else that's free and that's my annual staple crop calculator. Obviously perennials are a great long-term solution but if you need food right now then you need annuals to fill in the gap between when you plant your food forest and when it starts producing. Whether you're growing for yourself, your family, or your whole community the calculator I've created will ask you which crops you want to grow and then tell you how many to plant in order to provide 100% of your calories or 80% or 50 or whatever your goal is. Want 100% of your diet to come from potatoes? I don't recommend it but the calculator will tell you how. The calculator is 100% free with no catches and no need to sign up for anything but if you use it and decide you're getting value out of it there's an option to pay whatever you would like for it. Really any amount, $1, $100, whatever value you think is appropriate and if you're a YouTuber or small business for a contribution of $10 or more you can include a link in our contributors list that will be viewed by anyone who uses the calculator and at the time of this recording that's been over a thousand people even though my small YouTube channel is only 200 subscribers strong. There's a link down the description where you can find out more and get your own copy. I hope you'll use it and help me reach my goal of helping the world feed itself without all of the shady business of the industrial food system. Now on to technique number six. Remember that artichoke from the beginning of the video? Well that was grown from a seed that was received as a Christmas gift. So was this rhubarb and though they haven't sprouted yet so are these temperate yams aka yam berries named such by perennial vegetable expert Eric Tonesmeyer for their tendency to produce above ground tubers that are similar to a potato. By the way if you're looking for perennial vegetables to round out an overabundance of perennial fruit then I really recommend Eric's books. Perennial vegetables is an encyclopedia that covers common and exotic perennials from around the world that can be grown in a food forest setting and Paradise slot is an example of how they were able to build a food forest with over 300 species in the freezing bitter cold of Holly Oak, Massachusetts. As always I have a list of recommended reading in my description where you can get links to his books. In any event getting plants as gifts is often just a matter of asking so whether it's for a birthday, holiday, anniversary, or just because let the people who you love and who love you know that you want plants. Are you an expert or something? Either something you studied in school or something you do for work or just something that you picked up as a hobby? If you are there might be someone out there who's willing to trade you plants for your help. My buddy Carl Treen of Carl's Food Forest Garden hit me up with that exact proposition. He saw that my YouTube channel had almost doubled in size over the past month. He wanted to know how I did it and what he offered as compensation was a package full of plants. This bin is only a fraction of the stuff that Carl sent me and it includes heirloom apples, hascaps, gummies, and more. Carl's doing a lot of great work with his own food forest and I hope his channel grows as he puts my tips to work. Go check out his channel using the link in the description below and then use your own expertise to go get plants of your own. If you've been using these techniques to acquire free plants then you've probably got quite a collection started and that's when you can start trading the things you have for things that people aren't willing to part with for free. At the beginning of the pandemic I knew I wanted to get some sun chokes on the ground and I just hadn't managed to get any yet. By the time the pandemic rolled around they were either all out of stock or prices that I just couldn't justify. Well I found another lucky craigslist ad where someone was offering sun chokes for sale but instead I offered them a trade and for just a few goji berry cuttings and some comfrey I was able to come home with 20 sun chokes. By the way that comfrey was two dollars for a dozen with an ebay coupon and those goji berries they're the same ones I mentioned getting for free from a friend earlier. There are lots of local groups on Facebook that revolve specifically around trading plants and there are gardener-centric sites like Dave's Garden which have entire sections of the website devoted to trading plants. Go check them out find someone to trade with. Okay okay you might be thinking well nursery plants aren't free but hear me out. The one thing I do immediately anytime I bring a potted plant home regardless of the source is immediately propagate it. I brought home this one hosta for around 10 bucks and what I did was I immediately divided it. For that 10 bucks I got not only one plant but two plants, three plants, four plants. Anytime you bring home a potted plant I want to encourage you to learn how to propagate it and do so immediately. Not only will you end up with extra plants for free but if the original plant dies you'll have some backups. I've had that happen to me so many times I'm glad I've started propagating my things. Not only did I immediately propagate my hostas when I got them home but I also propagated these pineapple guavas and these lingonberries. Some plants can't be propagated by cutting so you need to use the slightly more time-consuming process of layering. Some plants can take up to two years to form roots while layering especially nuts like our native beaked hazelnut here. So if you're going to be layering it has to be things you'll have access to in a few weeks months or even years when the process is complete. While it isn't strictly necessary for all plants some plants benefit from having their bark scraped as they tend to form roots where they are wounded. I don't know what's the case for this native hazelnut here so I'm going to go ahead and give it a scrape on a few of these branches. That ought to do. Now that we've scraped the bark on some of the branches now we just have to pile up dirt around the base. Now that the base of our plant is covered all we have to do is wait. Some plants will form roots in weeks or months but other things like this hazelnut might take up to two years so just make sure that this is a tree either on your own site or to friend or family members home so that you will have access to it for that entire time. By the way this form of layering is called stool layering and is for plants that send up multiple trunks from the ground. If you're doing something with a single trunk look into air layering that's a technique you're going to want to use. We've got our two bonus techniques left but first I need your help overcoming our robot overlords. If you've gotten anything out of this video if you've laughed if you've learned something whatever it is if you've gotten anything out of it once you hit the subscribe button that'll teach the youtube algorithm what kind of people enjoy my videos and will help my videos reach more and more people. I really appreciate it. This is another one that's only pseudo free but if you're buying fruits and vegetables from the grocery store anyway this is a great way to get things that might not be available in local nurseries. This horseradish is from a little piece that was left over from the store. These pomegranates were from seeds saved from a store about pomegranate as was this key lime. This chestnut that's just starting to pop up it too was a store bought nut. Now there are two objections people commonly have to starting fruits and nuts from seed. The first is won't it take too long? Well the answer to that is not always. Some things like peaches famously can produce fruit in two to three years from seed and for the price of a fruit I was going to eat anyway that seems like a good investment. Besides many plants you get from the nursery are only two to three years old anyway so at most you're losing two to three years for a plant that let's be honest. Were you going to buy it this year from a nursery anyway? Were you going to buy it next year? Were you going to buy it the year after? If not put a seed in the ground today you'll be further ahead than if you waited to buy something from the nursery. The other objection that people have is once you end up with something that isn't worth eating and the answer to that is possibly and also it doesn't matter. The vast majority of things are going to resemble their parents and grandparents so if you're planting the seeds from something that was worth eating to begin with you're probably going to end up with something that was worth eating in the end. Many of the best apples I've tasted have been wild apples whose seeds have been dropped by birds in the middle of the woods. Trust me you're going to get a lot of good apples if you start with good seeds. If you're one of the nearly million people that's following the gardening channel with James Progioni you know that he started the Progioni apple from seed and he's a big fan of that one. It's a little bit smaller than a supermarket apple but it's packed with flavor and the reason I say it doesn't matter if you ended with something that you don't think is worth eating is you can just graft something into it. You'll already have an established rootstock that you know is resistant to the diseases on your site, it's resistant to the climatic conditions on your site, it's resistant to the pests on your site. Now all you've got to do is add in the flavors that you like and you'll be set. You already have an established rootstock and they'll start fruiting much sooner than if you had waited to plant a named variety. So get out there and plant the seeds from your supermarket produce and if you have any Asian or Latin or Ethiopian or any other type of markets in your neighborhood go check them out. Often you can find seeds to peppers or other things that you can't commonly get elsewhere. You can find roots and tubers and rhizomes that you can't get elsewhere not even in nurseries. So go check them out and experiment with things that you can plant at home. This technique is really two techniques but I'm bundling them together because you guys made it to this point in the video and you're awesome. This is all about how to get free plants from the government. If you're watching this video because you're struggling financially then you might be on some kind of government assistance like food stamps. Here's a secret that I just learned from Reliance on Trust and that is you can buy potted plants with your food stamps whether that's vegetable starts or even berry bushes. I'm going to link to Reliance on Trust video so you can see his food stamp plant haul. The other way to get free plants from the government is to request them from your government seed bank. If you don't know if you have a government seed bank you should definitely find out. Here in the U.S. ours is called GRINT or the germplasm resources information network and it provides free seeds, cuttings, tubers and other germplasm to breeders and researchers. Now don't worry you don't have to be associated with the university or big ag in order to request material. Even amateur breeders can make requests. The breeding projects that I'm working on this year are these Andean potatoes that I'm super excited about as well as a collection of different staple crops that were consumed by local tribes including camis, yampa, balsam root and wapato. Which of these techniques are you going to use to get free plants and what plants are you going to get? Put your answers down below in the comments and then YouTube thinks you're going to like this video right here. Check it out.