Edible Landscaping Transformation: Turning a Driveway Section Into a Sugarcane Living Fence

Right now we're about to talk about this privacy fence we have right here of sugarcane from our neighbor's driveway. If you're interested in growing a privacy fence that you could eat, that you could juice, check this video out. This privacy fence is Thai purple sugarcane that looks like this and we're going to get into some befores and afters. What we did is we planted this in July of 2024. We're now in fall of 2025 so it's a little over a year old and we've been harvesting a lot from it especially these sticks right here. So right here it was January 2024. I got the long hair going and we had the whole Mexican Sunflower line. Then here fast forward to July 2024 we're taking out the grass with a sod remover. Here's me in the process of taking the grass out with the sod remover because we're going to start to install this system. Here's what it looked like before. We're putting coconut palms in between so here's all the sand for the coconut palms and what we're going to do is we're going to back the truck in and drop all the sand just like this. As you can see in this video I think I made a little little sand castle man. I put a little smiley face. In Florida we don't get snowman we get sandman. We pick sand because coconuts grow amazing on the beach. They don't need too much of fertile soil so here's another one. We spaced the coconuts I think it was 17 feet apart and then put the sugarcane in between. Take a look this is that same row and this is what it used to look like. Here's us taking out some dirt in between the sugarcane planting it. These were 16 inch sticks so that's why Anthony mentions later in the video. It's about 30 sticks to plant this whole section and that's some compost we put on top of the sugarcane after we buried it back. We only buried it about three four inches and then here's the time lapse of us planting the coconuts. We planted a banana but took it out and did more cane. That's vetiver going down the lane. These are called vetiver plugs. Really cool. We love to surround all of our food gardens with these vetiver plugs for natural fertilizer to help with erosion. We're going to talk about more of it in this video once we get to the current future but this is us mulching. This was the finished product right here so I'm going to let Anthony talk on this one. Good day that's a wrap over here. Got grass-fed coconut palms. All these clumping grasses are going to be used as natural fertilizer natural mulch going to be chopped down put on top of these coconut palms. We also got sugarcane that's going to be coming up here in the middle. Got a banana in the middle of all of them. Got four coconut palms about 15 foot spacing. Then over there looking all jacked up get outside get some exercising in. Beautiful day for it. We got more sugarcane that's going to come up in the middle here as well so stay tuned. We're excited to get some coconuts coming here in the next couple years. Excited to see how this all turns out. Let's keep it growing. So this privacy fence that you see right here is about four to five feet wide and it's about 55 feet long and we probably used anywhere from 25 to 30 sticks for this line to make it dense. This size right here all down the row just like this and these clumps that you see. We got a coconut palm in the middle here. We got vetiver grass on the sides. These are the vetivers right here and these are on the edges. What do we why did we plant these vetiver right here? So the reason we have these vetivers right here there's multiple reasons. One is because it acts as living mulch so eventually we won't have to bring all this mulch in. You'll have a lot of vetiver grasses where you chop it down and use that material as mulch to feed your plants. It helps with water retention as well. It breaks down and naturally fertilizes your sugarcane. So this right here is a partner of this and when you cut this the roots release different hormones that tells this grass hey let's start growing and it also tells the sugarcane like hey it's time to grow as well. The sugarcane just gets a symbiotic relationship so they work hand in hand and they're beautiful. Another thing the vetiver does it helps keep all the mulch on the inside as well. It acts as a filter as well. It keeps a lot of the nasty stuff out of your system. The roots get down deep and they filter all the different chemicals that may get into your swales or inside of your rows of your fruit trees. We're shipping them to you like this. These are called vetiver plugs. We got about 30 down the lane. We like to space them about two feet apart. If you put them too far apart they won't connect. So if you once you get our vetiver plugs shipped right to your door you could either start them in a pot which is what we recommend or you could even start right in the ground. Just this size we put them all down the row 60 feet long by six feet wide. You got about 65 to 70 vetiver plug propagations right here right here. They literally all these started from from just something just like that. Come on over here. So the reason we put them two feet apart is because you want them to create a wall. One of our buddies, I was actually on the phone with him the other day, he's literally using vetiver as raised beds so I could imagine. Ah I see it. He has the bed, he has the soil going up here, he has more vetiver here and more vetiver here and just soil in the middle. So the reason you want to put them two feet is because they'll close up a lot better and they'll have you'll have a tight hedge and the weeds will. Another reason we like to grow them so weeds don't get into your systems as well. Like weeds or grass won't get past this this wall these walls right here. So look at this. It's solid and this is how they all started. We took these vetiver plugs and we planted one here. What you want to do is about one and a half to two foot spacing. So we're going to measure this. So if you do one and a half feet apart and you will have a 33 30 to 33 foot section it'll completely cover it with 20 of these. Yeah for 20 think 30 feet. Yeah because you want to go dense. Yeah the denser you go the sooner it will close up. This even took what about a year to connect? Maybe a year and a half? Maybe a little longer. Yeah this has been growing here for a while. Yeah so this has been here what now three and a half years. Yeah so but we've had it up to here before. We just sculpted it. Let's take it back yeah. So yeah this was in the beginning of last summer. This was basically just grass and some Mexican sunflower sticks. So how many that's one stick is right there. That's one stick order. Two sticks. Three. This is about four sticks right here that we would ship to you. This is about four. You got five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Each one of those had two because they're pretty wide. Okay so that's and this is a called homeowner green. This is what they look like after you plant them in the pot or you could plant them directly in the ground. So what do you got? You got a 50 foot line. 14 if you did one. Yeah so 28. 28 sticks. 30 sticks. It's pretty big and if you're wondering if they run like bamboo the answer is no they don't. The only thing you have to worry about sometimes if you don't harvest them and they fall over and you have just bare dirt right there. If they fall over on top of grass your lawn they're not going to sprout but if they fall if they fall over some bare dirt yeah they're gonna they're gonna grow and they're gonna kick in but they don't they don't they're not like bamboo where they're coming up everywhere and they're going crazy and they're going over here and going over there like if you if you take out a piece of your grass and you plant the sugarcane sticks in it mulch around it the mulch is key guys you got to put the mulch around it look we put mulch around it but it won't start popping up through the grass so it's an amazing crop you know we usually harvest it anywhere from 10 to like 14 months we juice it um we we we drink the juice straight up we add lemons yeah add limes it's amazing it's healthy really a lot of health benefits we'll have a link to the how to juice it video we made one of those at the end of this video so we're in some colder months right now in the year and what you want to do once your sugarcane sticks come to your door you want to put them in a pot first right now we're actually bringing these pots right inside of our garage because if it gets too cold it's going to burn your sugarcane plants crispy and they're not going to be happy and they're probably not going to grow and then once the spring rolls around and it starts warming up you can get these pots in the ground and they already have a couple months established and ready to rock and roll so if you guys are interested in getting yourself some vetiver plugs some vetiver propagation some sugarcane propagations check out the information below in the caption for shipping all this right to your door if you wanted a privacy fence you could definitely use sugarcane and some vetiver grass to help feed the sugarcane so thanks again for watching remember to subscribe share this with someone you know that's looking for a privacy fence or looking to grow their own food and check this link out right here if you want to learn how to juice it that's the next step once you got a privacy fence now you got to juice it and then check out this other video right here to see our whole entire food garden tour