I really appreciate the commentary and scientific approach to gardening, this is a discipline full of myths and crazy claims, and it’s great to see someone put them to the test while acknowledging their setup’s limits.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, there are a lot of claims out there, and probably some validity to most of them. But it is hard to find people who have experienced enough to be able to really compare.
I've done much the same trials, but in series, not in parallel. I started gardening in the southern US, where the deep mulch / Ruth Stout method works great, but then moved to western Oregon 40 years ago and found that it didn't work at all in the wet, cold, slug-filled climate we have here. I've switched all my outdoor beds to the deep compost / wood chip path style and they work very well. In my polytunnels I found that the deep mulch delayed the soil warming and since the polytunnels are for growing hot weather crops like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants that was a failure for me. I now lightly "tilth" the surface of the polytunnel beds to incorporate a few cm of compost, then reapply more in the summer when it's getting hot. It all boils down to climate and purpose, but it's great to see you doing the controlled trials. We could use someone doing similar trials in Spain or Italy (or Texas) for comparison.
That is interesting, thanks for sharing. All that makes sense to me. I think the beds with lost of undecomposed organic material are really going to suffer in comparison, but as you say it is all about context. I’d love to see similar trials in a lot of other places!
TLDR:Your videos help me to be successful in something that gives me meaning. Being as helpful to my family and loved ones as I can. I’m in a wheelchair 98% of the time. I can’t walk more than 80 feet without assistance. I was born with a neuromuscular disease. My muscles in my extremities atrophy due to a DNA mutation. I’m not one to think of myself as disabled. The pain is the biggest issue, I have found ways around my weaknesses. We built a house. I was the subcontractor. I kept everyone paid and the schedule and crews coordinated. I’ve done so many hard things in life after learning all I could from TH-cam videos. This channel is no different! Thank you for all of this information. I’ve always ALWAYS wanted to be self sufficient to reduce my impact on the planet (due to emotional trauma linked to my disease. I feel like a burden). I have been keeping a compost pile under my breeding rabbits. Im filling raised beds with decomposing old firewood and leaves under compost and amended soil for drainage. This coming spring I get to have my very first planting in my homestead garden. Im giddy from excitement. I cannot wait to be cooking dinners of roast chicken or rabbit with veggies and berry cobbler primarily from the homestead. Your videos help people in situations that you’ll never know about. I hope you feel accomplished ❤ you sure help me to feel that way!
Thank you for sharing your story. It means so much. I do this work and send these videos out into the world, without really knowing what impact they will have, or the kinds of people who will find them valuable. Comments like yours really help to fill in that picture, and to give it all a deeper meaning and purpose. I hope you have a great growing season next year, with wonderful vegetables to share with everyone important in your life.
@@REDGardens I really appreciate the response. I know how busy you are, saving the world and all. If only more of us had a tenth of your dedication the world would be different. I’m glad you get recognition that’s so obviously deserved. Have a great holiday season and best of wishes to you and yours for 2023.
@@BlackJesus8463 yeah I would do 5 days on. Autophagy can’t help the fact my “blueprints” are wrong. It can help clean out and repair cells though. It cleared acne well too
@@justkeepgoing2657 It doesn't just fix DNA it allows the body to express different epigenetic traits, I think through hormones or something. You can literally store data in DNA and it has nothing to do with autophagy. There's also the concept of junk DNA that could play a factor.
I cannot wait to see the results. I know I have to be patient. But I know you will deliver the results with amazing detail. Thank you love love love your vids.
The no dig method seems like the best way to go! I love how you experiment with different ways of growing and scientific research to get the best results. Thank you again 💓!
Glad you appreciate the trials we do! No-till defiantly has advantages, and seems to be a good option for a lot of people. But I don’t think it is always the best option, as there can be some serious pest issues, and situations where that amount of organic matter is not viable.
@@BlackJesus8463 And he also seems to be digging in the same amount of compost into the other bed. But also seems to be using compost that is not fully mature, which works well as an annual amendment to the surface of a no-dig bed, but stuff that I would not dig in to the soil because it would likely lock up nitrogen from the soil, which would result in lower yields. His results are interesting, but not definitive in my opinion. If I am going to dig in compost I would want it to be better quality stuff, or at least more mature.
If you’re having issues with slugs, and I suspect you will, just water everything with rainwater (groundwater will require a much higher dose because of the carbonates) mixed with liquid iron. I dose my polytunnel every year in spring with it to make sure I don’t have slugs eating my seedlings.
Iron should speed up the biological processes in the soil since it’s usually one of the limiting nutrients especially in soils that stay saturated for long periods like in Ireland. Iron phosphate is also what’s in the slug pellets.
@@seanconway1154 That is interesting. The soil tests that I have had done in this area always show plenty of iron, which might be because of this soil is fairly free draining and doesn't stay saturated fro very long.
Soil tests are notoriously flawed for most nutrients. They tell you the entire available nutrient but not the form it’s present in or if it’s tied up. Don’t rely on them. Plants will tell you what they need. Considering the large amount of crops you grow and the large area you use, it might be worth your while to invest in sap analysis to save you wasting money on soil tests and nutrients you probably don’t need.
I'm very interested to see the follow up videos on these trial beds! I love that you are attempting to do a side by side comparison so that the different beds can be a good test run. I think it's overkill to tarp things before planting just based on my own experiences, but if you used a lot of perrennial weeds, you'll be glad you did! I'm keen to see if slugs are a problem, but overall, seems like you should have great beds and great fertility!
I am going to wait until the spring to see how many weeds start growing, and make a decision then. And the slug and other pest issues will be very interesting to observe.
I really love no till. my best source of free huge cardboard pieces i found was a bike shop. they get the frame of the bikes in huge thick less printed packages and they have very litle tape and staples you need to remove. Hope this may help you :)
can i ask a question about no till in terms of biology. my current understanding is that no till causes plants and soil life to work together. digging disrupts that. also adding fertiliser does this by laying soil life off the job. is that correct?
Regular digging, especially tilling which aggressively mixes the soil, can cause some big issues with aloe types of soil biology. Ao not tilling will help in ways, but in think so much depends on context. As far as I can tell, adding too much on concentrated fertility, without adding organic matter, can gradually deplete the soil life.
Very, very interesting trial! Since you anticipate possible snail/slug issues; do you already have plans to deal with them should they occur or will you deal with them when they do?
Our slug strategy has changed since the last time I made a video about it all. We have used traps a lot, mainly planks of wood for them to hide under, which we regularly turn over to kill the slugs. Last year we started to use a slug pellets that is apparently suitable for an organic system, which is supposed to be safe for other wildlife. They seem to work well, and that gives me more confidence in trying a mulch trial like this.
Are you concerned about the sources of material in the municipal compost? Some use sewage waste termed "biosolids" stated by our plant as "Co-Composted biosolids is waste water treatment plant sludge and yard waste composted over a period of 8 months or longer if necessary. ACl’s process to compost uses thermophilic bacteria." I tried it, because it's reasonably priced, but it bothers me.
Great work mate, don't know how you run a market garden and make the videos! Thanks for all the hard work I look forward to seeing your new videos pop up in my feed 😀
I am excited to see fruits of your labor. I have been highly interested in no dig methods of gardening and have tried the Ruth Stout method. I really want to do back to Eden.
I've been mostly no dig gardening for many decades. I want to get the most production I can out of the least effort required. I've trialled a number of methods in the past with varying results but never wrote anything down. So I'm interested in what your comparisons will be like. I'm also interested in what pest pressure you will see as the addition of undigested matter can encourage all those things that like to aid the composting process and live in the material before it becomes waste products that is the compost layer and food for plants. Like slugs for example.
Yes, it will be very interesting to see what kind of pest pressure there will be in the different methods. We have a few ways to deal with slugs, but not sure if it will be enough.
Will be watching this one closely. As I've established new no-dig beds over the past few years I have always left the beds covered the first year and planted squash/pumpkin or slow brassicas into the mypex to suppress any weed seeds. Will be interesting to see how you get on planting into it in year 1 in Irish conditions. Thanks for the video as always
Yes, it will be interesting. I was planning to grow a range of larger brassica plants in these beds next year, ones that I can transplant in the early summer.
I've also not got out to my veg patch (and new potato patch) early enough :-( We had -7C or so all last week, so I couldn't really do much. At least it should have killed the standing weeds/grass (mix of bugloss, poppies, barley, rape - new and feral, dandelion, chamomile, vetch and whatever else blew in and grew in this ex-agricultural field). I'll stamp them down, cover with cardboard and use whatever I've got to cover. I could make a reasonable quantity of ramiel woodchip if I get my orchards pruned, and I can use the conifer chippings for paths. This conifer chipping worked in my tattie patch last year really well, in fact the plants preferred to grow out into the path under it, which surprised me, as I thought it would be too acid! Perhaps it was just that it stayed moister under there. I've also got the 1-2 yr old part of my compost heap, old barn straw and beech hedge cuttings plus lots of apple/ pear pomace, and my 1 yr old kitchen scraps/cardboard compost. I could probably get used barn straw and/or horse manure from my neighbour (but I'm maybe too shy to ask...)
That is interesting about the potatoes growing out under the mulch. It can be tricky to get enough organic matter to really help boost the fertility and mulch the soil. In some cases it seems easier to dig than to haul in so much mulch!
Excited to see your analysis! I have begun new beds, something between Ruth Stout and lasagna style. Eventually they'll be managed more Dowding style once the initial material decomposes.
I'm concerned that your lasagna bed will be attractive to rodents, not as for food but as shelter. I'm really rooting for your Dowding bed. If you can use good compost to jumpstart the municipal stuff, you'll have scalable solution.
Hi Bruce, great to see these experiments being done in our damp climate. Look forward to seeing their progress. Two questions for you kind of unrelated to this video. Where did you purchase the broadfork? Did you bury the plastic of the newly established polytunnel and if so why did you opt for this method? Love the content.
Thanks. I think the damp conditions will be the biggest factor. I got the broadfork from Fruit Hill Farm. I bury the tunnels edges as I think it is the strongest method of securing them against the wind.
Thank you so much for all the documented work. Its been the most interesting for sure and definitely helps all of us bring more to home. All the best onwards
You're spoiling us with all these trials Bruce! You must have had a hell of a year managing it all, so thank you very much for all the work you do! Glad to be a patron of your channel :) This year I've started trialling another no-dig/mulch method. Thanks to your channel, I've learnt to look at my context, instead of applying existing methods verbatim. I've got access to an abundance of autumn leaves (non-oak), and my soil is lacking in organic matter (it was a neglected allotment). So I've amended the soil with kelp meal, compost and alfalfa pellets, and then covered them in a thick layer of leaves. Don't know how it will turn out, but last time I checked there were many worms busy breaking it all down. I've had a professional soil test done before I started, and I'm planning to do another one next year (another lesson from your channel).
Love the robin at the end BTW, they're so inquisitive and cheeky. Every time I'm working in the garden, there's a robin keeping me company. They know where the food is 😄
It has been a busy year! But I am glad to finally get this no-till trial started. Thanks for being a Patron! Hope your own no-dig method works well for you!
It will be interesting to see if the slug problem is there again. I had the slug problem this last growing season. I tried everything, but the slugs won.
I suspect slugs will be there, and might win, which will show how inappropriate some methods might be. Which is a reasonable result of this trial. But we have a few methods to deal with slugs, and if we can use them to keep the slug population down enough for the method to be viable enough to use in this climate, then that would also be a decent result of the trial.
You had a little bird merrily hopping around with you there. You have a lot going on with this one, and I suppose you can't decide what to plant until things start to work really, Can you?
That robin is one of our regular companions when working in the gardens! I would prefer to delay planting until things settle down and I get a sense of the weed pressure.
@@REDGardens awww, I have one too and a female blackbird who is so cheeky. She built a nest in the top of my outside light. Yes, I get that. It's very exciting.
no manures? i think manures are great combos of organic matter and nutrient. with so much cardboard and straw i would add an equal amount of mixed manures. imho
Yeah, manures would have been a great addition to a few of them. But i am hesitant to trust manures around here, as there has been herbicide contamination. And most farmers in the area use slurry pits.
@@REDGardens ahh i see. I have a manure compost pile and that could be an option? I also use spent mushroom compost. It has a range of manures and straws, is balanced and is already composted to some extent. It's probably my favourite of all my soil amendments.
I think it would be interesting to put a thermometer in each of the beds that records temperatures during day/night to see wich beds cool of fast or insulate the soil good / heat up quickly in the morning sun and how much of a difference there is and link that to the development to the plants that are growing there....but that would go into the "smart gardening" or "gadget-gardening" area equipmentwize....
I was thinking about using a thermometer a few times at different depths to check the temperature differences, but a bunch of sensors with collected data would be great! I should look into that. Thanks for the idea.
seems expensive and counter to the term "no dig" when you put down media and fertility every year, that will be most of what the root zone of vegetables grow in. you dont dig existing soil but put in all new growing media on top, which is all loose and hopefully sterilized etc. Not sure i buy the term "no dig" when essentially new media is brought in regularly. where soil is very poor, quick profit growers bring in bags of growing media with fertilizer and grow individual plants in each bag. How different is this "no dig"? Maybe the organic crowd is easily bamboozled by hypocritical terminology? Surely you're seeing a growth of subscribers with comments that are more and more culty/religious and detached from reality?
You raise some good points. Most methods do rely on a huge amount of material, at least for the first year, and I do wonder about the viability of it all. Still not convinced it is the best approach, but seems to work for a lot of people, at least if they have access to lots of clean compost. One of the more interesting and potential benefits of the method with lots of compost, is the lack of any real weeding, or at least greatly reduced, which can be a real time saver for several seasons. And with so much fertility and organic matter added in the first season it really reduces the amount needed for subsequent years. For me, I am not too precious about digging and disturbing the soil, I don’t think it is nearly as problematic as many people who have adopted the no-dig method believe. I think there are a lot of options between never digging at all, and regular mechanical tilling which completely mixes the soil. In this trial I decided to try not disturbing the soil at all, to see what happens. There are a lot of people who really think certain methods are obviously the best. And a lot of them are focused on the Dowding no-dig method at the moment.
@@REDGardens : for those lucky enough to be on post glacial ground or alluvial soils from regular flooding or erosion in a valley, probably plenty of nutrients are replenished and soil condition is good. others have to make do with other soils, not so good in many respects. the sustainability of bringing in a forest worth of compost every year--if not the expense--is hardly anything to shout out about, whilst pretending soil is actually just perfect at same time. this is what i hear from these "no chemicals" proponents. they tend to peddle latest (expensive and work intensive) organic and whatever latest craze, and also peddle decades old stories about farmers only using NPK and abusing the soil. i've been watching lots of agricultural research and trials with farmers, and they do care about soil, but within reason, and within staying profitable. they still tend to use too much herbicides for my liking, which i dont need to do, to terminate crops. the "chemicals bad" line is dishonest without apology. home grown food tastes better, but effort required, because it gets picked when ripe, and doesnt sit in cold storage for a year, which is what supermarkets do. i've found nothing but personal testimony and empty assertions by organic crowd and organic certification bodies. they arose on a real need to overhaul how much and what gets sprayed on grown food but, nowadays just seem to peddle fairy tales and fear monger about farming practices some 60 years ago. you can work the soil to improve it for growing crops, both short and longer term, when you do it right.
I found your channel while looking at screening methods.. I'm going to screen my new garden which is heavily laden with rock (from medicine balls to footballs down to gumball sized rock) and the reaction to that I got from the no-till dowding crowd was one of disapproval and almost straight up contempt... Then mentioning rototilling to correct tilth (I'm working with real bush dirt and very sandy) and you just get treated like you're some kind of petro-chemical round-up farmer. I believe in my heart that picking the rocks out of the top 12" of ground and tilling in chicken manure will be better for the existing soil than just putting down 6" of new compost. How could you ever grow carrots unless you put down at least 12" of new soil (more like 16" because it settles)? Eventually after my tilth is corrected I will go low till/no-till but until then, I'll stick with the conventional. I think part of it is because none of them have ever really worked with RAW ground. The old timers used horses and plows to clear and stoneboats to pick the rock on the land they now have the luxury to be no-tilling. Another part of it is they don't seem to understand the compost is fertility that was taken from somewhere else and because of money they can acquire it. Picking stone and screening dirt is honest labor and is only a trade of calories for good dirt. That's where I'm at
Like this trial, this is where I have ended up. No purism, just practical elements. I have to remove the huge rocks before I start no-dig and I add a lot of amendments now too. I use really well rotten wood chip for paths bc slugs like it less if it's fine and has fewer big bits for them to hide under. Only thing I'd guess could go wrong here might be slugs under the hay. I'm in Wales and that would worry me here. Perhaps you get enough frosts that your slug problems aren't as bad as ours? Other than, I'd say those beds are going to be amazing. Anything I've done that thick and rich has done really well. Look forward to seeing the results.
I've been using a no dig version for a few years and it seems to work well. I simply tarp my garden when it's not actively growing. Often this is in the fall. In the spring I remove the tarp and find a weed free flat piece of soil to plant into. I simply dig little holes to put box plants in or use a small 3 inch wide hand cultivator to loosen the soil down a few inches to sow seeds into. It is so much easier than digging or tilling and can be done earlier in the spring.
As always , a fascinating and educational video which I’ll study at least twice again. Thanks. I wonder why you don’t cover the hay with tarp now rather than later? It would be interesting also to see if a layer of stinging nettles under cardboard and then compost would turn out. I’m trying to use stuff which is plentiful too on my two allotments in north east Scotland . I use no-dig extensively but recognise its limitations. I tried using wood chips as a medium for growing potatoes this year but made the mistake of not giving them enough fertiliser. Have a good Christmas Bruce. You are an inspiration!
Thanks! I was considering covering the whole thing with a tarp, but ran out of time, and want to let a fair amount of rain in. Is there a reason you think I should specifically cover the hay? Stinging nettles would be a great addition to the layers if I was building the beds in the spring when they were abundant and nutrient rich.
@@REDGardens No specific reason to cover the hay early Bruce other than to accelerate its decomposition and keep any latent weeds suppressed. I’m not sure though if this would make the slug problem better or worse. I’m planning to use nettles more next year in teas and compost to make good use of it. I’ll watch how you get on with it too. Merry Christmas.
I grow everything in boxes in compost I make myself it's so simple with excellent results. I so appreciate your meticulous documentation of your experiments. Much appreciated.
Only thing I don't like is the cardboard, all kinds of unknown contaminates. Go thick enough with the compost and bale's, it's unnecessary. Like adding garbage to your growing space.
It's great to see comparative study. In my opinion, much depend on the quality of compost. But perhaps your amendments make the bid difference. Your approach is bery intelligent, all methods will do well. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! I agree that so much depends on the quality of the compost, and the other materials, but I felt it was important to work with what I could easily get, as most people can only get poor quality compost.
I tried using bales of straw as mulch. It would have been great except for the wheat seeds that germinated constantly. I love your videos and will be trying many things I've seen here :) Thank you for sharing!
First-year no-till is actually a process and a practice, not a "one-shot kills all weeds." No-till is all about creating a healthy soil microbiome over time. Things I saw in the video that were defeating your purpose: 1. Yanking new grass and weeds out of the soil after you've done the cardboard cover process completely defeats having done the cardboard process. It disturbs and aerates the soil and that activates and continues to produce new weeds. Tarping it for a year as mentioned in the video is not going to substantially change results. It's not do it once and kill everything. 2. When first starting a bed, mow it down as close to the ground as possible before you do anything. This is the right time to pull out all of the deep-rooted and rhizobial weeds. At this point you don't have a microbiome worth saving, being that of a weed factory or a lawn. So in addition to mowing short, it's permissible and desirable to pull out any deep-rooted plants like scutch grass, bind weed or Creeping Charlie. This is the only time in no till to do this. After the time under the cardboard you only cut plants off at the surface, leaving the roots to decompose and starving them due to lack of photosynthesis until they die off completely. That may take several iterations, even longer with bind weed etc but it will happen. 3. Soak the cardboard thoroughly so that it will decompose on schedule even as it blocks light and air from the weeds. Immediately cover with compost or mulch to keep the moisture in. I've done this procedure successfully with as little as three weeks before planting, cutting holes for transplanting, although a month or two is optimal. 4. You will still get weeds! But greatly reduced in frequency and volume as you maintain the plot. There will be rhizobial weeds with more stored energy than seeds. Resist the satisfying temptation to pull them out of the ground as this will just activate other seeds that never would have germinated except for this aeration and disturbance. Instead hoe them off at ground level like all the other weeds to come up. Normal weeds will cease producing after a couple of iterations of hoeing them, but scutch grass etc will take many more iterations before it gives up. But it will give up. If we're ripping it out of the soil it will never give up. At the beginning of my season I spent two hours or more weeding each week in my garden. Each week it was less time. Halfway through the season I spen5 about 5-10 minutes each week as I'm roaming around the garden doing other things. 5. You'll have weeds from other sources. A few will come in the wind or by birds and many more likely to come in in compost or mulches. A great many weeds will come in anytime you have bare soil not actively planted or shaded by growing plants. That is their job-nature hates bare soil. No-till is substantially weed-free because of a well-maintained and active healthy soil and cutting off plants at the surface leaving their roots to decompose, whether weeds or crops. It's never going to look like a herbicided desert but it will be substantially weed free. It needs to be continuously planted or at the least covered, preferably with compost or mulch. 6. Cover crops during the offseason are your best protection against weeds.
Hi! Thanks for the knowledge and experience sharing. I've learnt and taken good information from your videos. I just stumbled onto this mulches lecture (after watching your video) where it is said that lasagna mulching, cardboard and sheet mulches in general have a negative impact on gas and water flow through the soil, thus in soil quality for plant growth. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks and cheers from Argentina. link to video: th-cam.com/video/NXL9n2KNm1E/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for the link, I'll try to watch it when I have some free time. Like a lot of these things I think it really depends on context, the types of soil and the differences in climate - Oregon has very different climate to Ireland. I think there would definitely be some issues to start with, but with time I suspect things might settle down. But the reason for doing this type of exploration is to see how it works.
Hi there! In my no dig green house I have mulched the wall paths with chopped corn stalks. Do they need to be kept moist or will they decompose by themselves in a few years? Also, I want to mulch the plants with corn stalks too. Does the mulch around the plants have to be composted or just fresh dried corn stalks finely chopped. Note, I will have drip irrigation under this mulch
Looking good, we have the lovely Charles Dowding in the U.K. who has been using no dig for several decades. Would be interesting to see in your climate how your crops compares with ours in the south of the U.K. have started using no dig on my own new small allotment plots, so it’s all new to me
My method starts in the fall. I have a lot of leaves on my property and a leaf shredder. I put down a layer of shredded leaves, A couple of inches of compost. And then I drench it with indigenous micro organisms. Then I cover it with black landscape material For the winter. In the springtime I do another drench and then cover it for 3 weeks to 4 weeks. Then I plant. This will be the 3rd year I'm doing it and my harvest has increased each year. With almost no insect problems at all except for maybe snails. I have a pile of wood chips that has been decomposing for 2 years. I grow winecap mushrooms in them. Now that they have been decomposed and are filled with fungal activity I'll be probably putting that in the soil also. I make any fertilizer I need from weeds and comfrey I have in my yard. I even make my own fish fertilizer. no digging and cheap.
That sounds like a lovely and productive method! I wish I had access to an abundance of leaves like that. I will have to wait a few more years, or decades, for the trees around here to grow a lot more!
The cardboard will be covered with lots of material. The hay is still in fairly entangled blocks, so it should be fairly stable. The straw is probably going to blow around a bit until it gets wet enough.
I use Ruth Stout/ lasagna methods and my advice is: use straw! I will never use hay again. The weeds and grasses that come with hay are not worth it even if you get spoiled for free. Keep the straw deep year round and weeds will remain minimal and easy to pull if they do happen to make it through. This is because the energy will be put into finding the sun and not growing roots.
Thanks for the advice. I have used both this batch of straw and hay in other experiments, and the straw seemed to have a lot more seeds in it! Leftover wheat seeds from incomplete threshing. The hay didn’t seem to have any seeds, but that was a limited trial, and it will be interesting to see how it turns out. So I guess it really depends on the quality of the material you can get.
Very nice video, we appreciate the amount of work and time involved here. I was hoping one of the plots involved leaves, mostly because they are an abundant free source most people have access to. Also want everyone to know that your municipal collection sites for leave possibly pay to haul off their leaves like our city does. They bring me dump truck loads of free leaves, and tell me they want to find other people to take leaves because they have to pay the county transfer station if they dump there.
I would have liked to get leaves to try, but that isn’t a resource that is really available around here. There has been some from the Main Street of our little village, from the big trees on the green in front of the church, but there is not a lot and it gets mixed in with a lot of litter and debris from the road. There just aren’t many large trees and parklands around here, and the high winds tend to blow any leaves away. But if you can get leaves like that they can be a great resource for a garden.
Main reason is to make sure I can remove any weeds that make it through the mulch. If I planted a cover crop, any scutch grass that survived would remain hidden, and become more established, and it would be harder to get rid of it later. And it is probably too cold for seeds to germinate.
When you get the chance I would like to hear your method of scientific biases on how well terra peta works. I mean all I hear is it best thing in the world. But you never know with claims now a days. So if you ever feel the desire I would love to hear it from you.
It is interesting stuff, and there is a lot of enthusiastic support for it. I haven’t done proper trials yet to be able to come to any opinion a bout it all. The theory seems sound, but making it work in practice is the key. Bast on what other people are experiencing, it can be really beneficial in poor soil with low fertility, but not necessarily enough of a benefit in good fertile soil to be worth it. And you need to make sure it is made properly and changed with fertility before adding it to the soil. I hope to do proper trials next year.
I can't tell you how excited I am for the Lasagna bed. Just remember though, the end goal of permaculture is to create an ecosystem. Something should be eating your slugs. Oh... I just thought of something... I wonder if you could house some pet shop hedgehogs and give them movable paddocks in the garden. Like rotational grazing but it's cute hedgehogs eating slugs. I imagine it would rival the Guinea pig ranches youtube keeps suggesting after I looked up guinea pig vs rabbit farm.
Getting something to eat the slugs will be tricky, especially finding something that won’t also eat the vegetables. I had a big hedgehog in the gardens a few years ago and suspect it was the thing eating my broccoli heads! They eat more than just slugs.
@@REDGardens That's why you'd move them. Any animal that stays in an area too long will consume all the resources in that area whether they like them or not. By limiting the time each area is fenced in, you don't give the animals enough time to devastate an area after they run out of juicy slugs. A factor you have to consider when dealing with wildlife pressure is where are they getting their food from besides your garden. If the answer is "there isnt any wild food for them" you have the answer to both problems. They're just surviving in the new ecosystems we made on the only food available. We need to create space for them or they'll create space where we dont want them.
Very interesting Bruce, the Ruth Stout method does seem like a very large, shallow compost heap, I suspect it will not be overly successful, it will be interesting to see the results.
If I had a good local supply (i.e. clean without risk of herbicide damage to the crops) I would use it. Most of the cable farms around here use slurry pits. But I should put in the effort to look for someone locally I can trust.
I'm eager to see the results of this trail. Especially the one with the aged wood chips. What Paul Gautschi is unfortunately not very clear about is that the wood chips he uses, previously run through his chicken coup. They are enriched with chicken manure. Many people trying this method were disappointed because they tried it with regular wood chips. Maybe it works better with the aged wood chips.
I the in on some extra nitrogen would really help in a lot of situations. I have heard that some people wait until the first flush of leaves in the spring, to capture the nutrients and nitrogen the trees bring up from the roots. I think this would help a lot.
You may be able to use your municipal recycle center like I do and substitute free grass clippings for hay. I have done this for years and not had any visible herbicide damage to any of my bean, peppers, or tomatoes, and I use huge quantities of it. The only rumor I have heard is using grass clippings from a golf course was bad, possibly they used grazon type herbicide. But I'm thinking the feed and weed fertilizer for home owners probably doesn't contain any persistent herbicides.
Cool, Using soil beneath compost piles is clever, as is placing fertilizer below other layers, so it simply can’t wash away, and organic fertilizer like that doesn’t leach into water tables, so that isn’t an issue.
It will be interesting to see if the soil is a good option in the end, and how it compares to the other options. One thing to be mindful of is organic fertiliser can actually wash away, though perhaps not as fast as the conventional soluble fertilisers. To test this fill a large pot with manure or whatever other organic fertiliser you use, and leave it in the rain for a few weeks (or water it lightly every few days, enough for some of the water to flow through he bottom of the pot). If you collecting the water that flows through the pot, it will most likely be a dark colour and work really well as a liquid feed, because a fair amount of the fertility washed through with the rain.
Cool trial - I am very interested in this as I'm a Dowding/Perkins devotee, and it works for me in southern Ontario, so I haven't tried anything else. I like the addition of the biologically active compost as well. I understand the idea of waiting to see if there is weed pressure before planting, but is it worthwhile to plant a single row in the spring with a full season crop (or crops) just to see how things work out? You likely know that JM Fortier is a fan of ramial woodchips, but he harvests his in the spring to capture the early flush of nutrients. I wish that I could find spring ramial wood chips here.
I was thinking of sowing something, but decided to wait. I have had issues with getting rid of these kinds of weeds in the past and want to make sure they are really gone before starting things. But I will see how things are going in the spring, as you say it would be interesting to test how a few things will grow at the beginning.
@@REDGardens When I am done with an area in the fall I plant winter rye which keeps a green root in the ground and keeps nasty weeds away, it winters over under the snow and starts growing again in the cold wet spring and hits straw stage in early June and I cut it with a heavy duty weed wacker and rake it up for mulch. We can't plant till around June 1st. In rotation areas that have no crop I use Buckwheat because it grows so fast. In the fall I sow winter rye seed into the buck wheat and then cut the buck wheat down, walk on it/ roll it and leave it as a mulch for the rye to grow up through. Buckwheat breaks down very fast.
It's great you have all those materials; for most of us we have to use what we can get/produce. This type of video will help demonstrate what resource we might want to concentrate on getting. I once tried the Straw method which proved to be ideal slug habitat.
It took me a while to get in all this materials, and had to buy a lot of it in, so definitely can be a resource intensive process! I suspect I will have the same slug issues with the straw and hay, but have a few methods that might help to reduce the impact of this pest and make the method more viable.
Check out quillaja / soapbark extract for no till especially on compacted soils, I used it on black clay in my front yard and it made the soil drain so easily really worked so well
@@REDGardens it's something youde have to order online it's kinda pricey but I bought a kilo from China for about 150 us and used it alot last year haven't even made a dent in the bag I bought
Protect this man at all costs. Great video. Keep up the good work.
Much appreciated
Agreed. Canada's loss is our excellent gain.
Hard agree - such a treasure. We all appreciate the wealth of data, experience, and learning that the RED Gardens grow
I really appreciate the commentary and scientific approach to gardening, this is a discipline full of myths and crazy claims, and it’s great to see someone put them to the test while acknowledging their setup’s limits.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, there are a lot of claims out there, and probably some validity to most of them. But it is hard to find people who have experienced enough to be able to really compare.
I've done much the same trials, but in series, not in parallel. I started gardening in the southern US, where the deep mulch / Ruth Stout method works great, but then moved to western Oregon 40 years ago and found that it didn't work at all in the wet, cold, slug-filled climate we have here. I've switched all my outdoor beds to the deep compost / wood chip path style and they work very well. In my polytunnels I found that the deep mulch delayed the soil warming and since the polytunnels are for growing hot weather crops like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants that was a failure for me. I now lightly "tilth" the surface of the polytunnel beds to incorporate a few cm of compost, then reapply more in the summer when it's getting hot. It all boils down to climate and purpose, but it's great to see you doing the controlled trials. We could use someone doing similar trials in Spain or Italy (or Texas) for comparison.
That is interesting, thanks for sharing. All that makes sense to me. I think the beds with lost of undecomposed organic material are really going to suffer in comparison, but as you say it is all about context. I’d love to see similar trials in a lot of other places!
TLDR:Your videos help me to be successful in something that gives me meaning. Being as helpful to my family and loved ones as I can.
I’m in a wheelchair 98% of the time. I can’t walk more than 80 feet without assistance. I was born with a neuromuscular disease. My muscles in my extremities atrophy due to a DNA mutation. I’m not one to think of myself as disabled. The pain is the biggest issue, I have found ways around my weaknesses. We built a house. I was the subcontractor. I kept everyone paid and the schedule and crews coordinated. I’ve done so many hard things in life after learning all I could from TH-cam videos. This channel is no different! Thank you for all of this information. I’ve always ALWAYS wanted to be self sufficient to reduce my impact on the planet (due to emotional trauma linked to my disease. I feel like a burden). I have been keeping a compost pile under my breeding rabbits. Im filling raised beds with decomposing old firewood and leaves under compost and amended soil for drainage. This coming spring I get to have my very first planting in my homestead garden. Im giddy from excitement. I cannot wait to be cooking dinners of roast chicken or rabbit with veggies and berry cobbler primarily from the homestead. Your videos help people in situations that you’ll never know about. I hope you feel accomplished ❤ you sure help me to feel that way!
Thank you for sharing your story. It means so much. I do this work and send these videos out into the world, without really knowing what impact they will have, or the kinds of people who will find them valuable. Comments like yours really help to fill in that picture, and to give it all a deeper meaning and purpose. I hope you have a great growing season next year, with wonderful vegetables to share with everyone important in your life.
@@REDGardens I really appreciate the response. I know how busy you are, saving the world and all. If only more of us had a tenth of your dedication the world would be different. I’m glad you get recognition that’s so obviously deserved. Have a great holiday season and best of wishes to you and yours for 2023.
Have you tried fasting? It can allow your body to fix DNA.
@@BlackJesus8463 yeah I would do 5 days on. Autophagy can’t help the fact my “blueprints” are wrong. It can help clean out and repair cells though. It cleared acne well too
@@justkeepgoing2657 It doesn't just fix DNA it allows the body to express different epigenetic traits, I think through hormones or something. You can literally store data in DNA and it has nothing to do with autophagy. There's also the concept of junk DNA that could play a factor.
Your appetite for experimentation is remarkable! To the benefit of all gardeners. Thank you.
🙂 There is so much to explore and learn!
I really enjoy your videos. Your presentation of the subject is among the best learning channels on TH-cam.
Wow, thank you!!
I cannot wait to see the results. I know I have to be patient. But I know you will deliver the results with amazing detail. Thank you love love love your vids.
Thank you! I am also trying to be really patient!
Every time I hear municipal compost, I worry about the plants being stunted.
Yeah, I think a lot of it will need a few years to really start to release fertility to the plants.
The no dig method seems like the best way to go! I love how you experiment with different ways of growing and scientific research to get the best results. Thank you again 💓!
Glad you appreciate the trials we do! No-till defiantly has advantages, and seems to be a good option for a lot of people. But I don’t think it is always the best option, as there can be some serious pest issues, and situations where that amount of organic matter is not viable.
Charles Dowding is always getting more weight from no-dig and he keeps on working that one bed every year just to prove it.
@@BlackJesus8463 And he also seems to be digging in the same amount of compost into the other bed. But also seems to be using compost that is not fully mature, which works well as an annual amendment to the surface of a no-dig bed, but stuff that I would not dig in to the soil because it would likely lock up nitrogen from the soil, which would result in lower yields. His results are interesting, but not definitive in my opinion. If I am going to dig in compost I would want it to be better quality stuff, or at least more mature.
@@REDGardens I'll have to watch out for that.
If you’re having issues with slugs, and I suspect you will, just water everything with rainwater (groundwater will require a much higher dose because of the carbonates) mixed with liquid iron. I dose my polytunnel every year in spring with it to make sure I don’t have slugs eating my seedlings.
That is interesting. I wonder what impact it would have on the other biological processes that I want to happen in the layers
Iron should speed up the biological processes in the soil since it’s usually one of the limiting nutrients especially in soils that stay saturated for long periods like in Ireland. Iron phosphate is also what’s in the slug pellets.
@@seanconway1154 thanks
@@seanconway1154 That is interesting. The soil tests that I have had done in this area always show plenty of iron, which might be because of this soil is fairly free draining and doesn't stay saturated fro very long.
Soil tests are notoriously flawed for most nutrients. They tell you the entire available nutrient but not the form it’s present in or if it’s tied up. Don’t rely on them. Plants will tell you what they need. Considering the large amount of crops you grow and the large area you use, it might be worth your while to invest in sap analysis to save you wasting money on soil tests and nutrients you probably don’t need.
I'm very interested to see the follow up videos on these trial beds! I love that you are attempting to do a side by side comparison so that the different beds can be a good test run. I think it's overkill to tarp things before planting just based on my own experiences, but if you used a lot of perrennial weeds, you'll be glad you did! I'm keen to see if slugs are a problem, but overall, seems like you should have great beds and great fertility!
I am going to wait until the spring to see how many weeds start growing, and make a decision then. And the slug and other pest issues will be very interesting to observe.
@@REDGardens It would warm your soil faster though. It doesn't have to be about the weeds! ✌
I really love no till.
my best source of free huge cardboard pieces i found was a bike shop. they get the frame of the bikes in huge thick less printed packages and they have very litle tape and staples you need to remove. Hope this may help you :)
I wish we had a bike shop near us!
Thank you, I really love how you put a bunch of basic experimentation in your work.
You're very welcome.
you might single handedly do more for humanity than most politicians, your work will hopefully be instrumental for building a better future
Wow, thanks!
can i ask a question about no till in terms of biology.
my current understanding is that no till causes plants and soil life to work together. digging disrupts that. also adding fertiliser does this by laying soil life off the job.
is that correct?
Regular digging, especially tilling which aggressively mixes the soil, can cause some big issues with aloe types of soil biology. Ao not tilling will help in ways, but in think so much depends on context. As far as I can tell, adding too much on concentrated fertility, without adding organic matter, can gradually deplete the soil life.
Exactly what I plan on doing in the future when I get out of the city.
Thank you!😊
Hope you get out of the city soon!
Very, very interesting trial! Since you anticipate possible snail/slug issues; do you already have plans to deal with them should they occur or will you deal with them when they do?
Bruce has various vids on dealing with slugs. Look them up
Our slug strategy has changed since the last time I made a video about it all. We have used traps a lot, mainly planks of wood for them to hide under, which we regularly turn over to kill the slugs. Last year we started to use a slug pellets that is apparently suitable for an organic system, which is supposed to be safe for other wildlife. They seem to work well, and that gives me more confidence in trying a mulch trial like this.
Are you concerned about the sources of material in the municipal compost? Some use sewage waste termed "biosolids" stated by our plant as "Co-Composted biosolids is waste water treatment plant sludge and yard waste composted over a period of 8 months or longer if necessary. ACl’s process to compost uses thermophilic bacteria." I tried it, because it's reasonably priced, but it bothers me.
It is definitely something to be aware of. I don’t think there is any bio solids in this compost that I get.
Outstanding, well designed trial, it will be interesting to see how the different methods improve the soil profile over the years.
Thanks!
Thanks Bruce and Kristina! (And likely many others), very interesting and I am curious as to what will happen to the various fields.
🙂
Great work mate, don't know how you run a market garden and make the videos! Thanks for all the hard work I look forward to seeing your new videos pop up in my feed 😀
Thanks. It is a lot of work!
I am excited to see fruits of your labor. I have been highly interested in no dig methods of gardening and have tried the Ruth Stout method. I really want to do back to Eden.
I am really looking forward to seeing how they perform as well
I've been mostly no dig gardening for many decades. I want to get the most production I can out of the least effort required. I've trialled a number of methods in the past with varying results but never wrote anything down. So I'm interested in what your comparisons will be like. I'm also interested in what pest pressure you will see as the addition of undigested matter can encourage all those things that like to aid the composting process and live in the material before it becomes waste products that is the compost layer and food for plants.
Like slugs for example.
Yes, it will be very interesting to see what kind of pest pressure there will be in the different methods. We have a few ways to deal with slugs, but not sure if it will be enough.
Will be watching this one closely. As I've established new no-dig beds over the past few years I have always left the beds covered the first year and planted squash/pumpkin or slow brassicas into the mypex to suppress any weed seeds. Will be interesting to see how you get on planting into it in year 1 in Irish conditions. Thanks for the video as always
Yes, it will be interesting. I was planning to grow a range of larger brassica plants in these beds next year, ones that I can transplant in the early summer.
I've also not got out to my veg patch (and new potato patch) early enough :-( We had -7C or so all last week, so I couldn't really do much. At least it should have killed the standing weeds/grass (mix of bugloss, poppies, barley, rape - new and feral, dandelion, chamomile, vetch and whatever else blew in and grew in this ex-agricultural field). I'll stamp them down, cover with cardboard and use whatever I've got to cover. I could make a reasonable quantity of ramiel woodchip if I get my orchards pruned, and I can use the conifer chippings for paths. This conifer chipping worked in my tattie patch last year really well, in fact the plants preferred to grow out into the path under it, which surprised me, as I thought it would be too acid! Perhaps it was just that it stayed moister under there. I've also got the 1-2 yr old part of my compost heap, old barn straw and beech hedge cuttings plus lots of apple/ pear pomace, and my 1 yr old kitchen scraps/cardboard compost. I could probably get used barn straw and/or horse manure from my neighbour (but I'm maybe too shy to ask...)
That is interesting about the potatoes growing out under the mulch. It can be tricky to get enough organic matter to really help boost the fertility and mulch the soil. In some cases it seems easier to dig than to haul in so much mulch!
Excited to see your analysis! I have begun new beds, something between Ruth Stout and lasagna style. Eventually they'll be managed more Dowding style once the initial material decomposes.
I am also looking forward to seeing how it all works out. Hope you have a good season with you version of no-till.
I'm excited. Started gardening 15 years ago with the Ruth Stout method. Now I use a hodge podge of methods. It will be great to see these trials.
I am also looking forward to seeing how the Ruth Stout method works. I hear so much about it.
I'm concerned that your lasagna bed will be attractive to rodents, not as for food but as shelter.
I'm really rooting for your Dowding bed.
If you can use good compost to jumpstart the municipal stuff, you'll have scalable solution.
Yes, that is a concern.
Hi Bruce, great to see these experiments being done in our damp climate. Look forward to seeing their progress. Two questions for you kind of unrelated to this video. Where did you purchase the broadfork? Did you bury the plastic of the newly established polytunnel and if so why did you opt for this method? Love the content.
Thanks. I think the damp conditions will be the biggest factor.
I got the broadfork from Fruit Hill Farm.
I bury the tunnels edges as I think it is the strongest method of securing them against the wind.
Thank you so much for all the documented work. Its been the most interesting for sure and definitely helps all of us bring more to home. All the best onwards
Glad you enjoy it
Haven't you ever had problems of soil salinity adding all of that compost?
Not that I am aware of, but we do have a lot of rain, and fairly free draining soil.
You're spoiling us with all these trials Bruce! You must have had a hell of a year managing it all, so thank you very much for all the work you do! Glad to be a patron of your channel :)
This year I've started trialling another no-dig/mulch method. Thanks to your channel, I've learnt to look at my context, instead of applying existing methods verbatim. I've got access to an abundance of autumn leaves (non-oak), and my soil is lacking in organic matter (it was a neglected allotment). So I've amended the soil with kelp meal, compost and alfalfa pellets, and then covered them in a thick layer of leaves. Don't know how it will turn out, but last time I checked there were many worms busy breaking it all down. I've had a professional soil test done before I started, and I'm planning to do another one next year (another lesson from your channel).
Love the robin at the end BTW, they're so inquisitive and cheeky. Every time I'm working in the garden, there's a robin keeping me company. They know where the food is 😄
It has been a busy year! But I am glad to finally get this no-till trial started. Thanks for being a Patron!
Hope your own no-dig method works well for you!
That robin is one of our regular companions when working in the gardens. It makes everything a little bit more enjoyable!
😊
It will be interesting to see if the slug problem is there again. I had the slug problem this last growing season. I tried everything, but the slugs won.
I suspect slugs will be there, and might win, which will show how inappropriate some methods might be. Which is a reasonable result of this trial. But we have a few methods to deal with slugs, and if we can use them to keep the slug population down enough for the method to be viable enough to use in this climate, then that would also be a decent result of the trial.
You had a little bird merrily hopping around with you there. You have a lot going on with this one, and I suppose you can't decide what to plant until things start to work really, Can you?
That robin is one of our regular companions when working in the gardens! I would prefer to delay planting until things settle down and I get a sense of the weed pressure.
@@REDGardens awww, I have one too and a female blackbird who is so cheeky. She built a nest in the top of my outside light. Yes, I get that. It's very exciting.
no manures? i think manures are great combos of organic matter and nutrient. with so much cardboard and straw i would add an equal amount of mixed manures. imho
Yeah, manures would have been a great addition to a few of them. But i am hesitant to trust manures around here, as there has been herbicide contamination. And most farmers in the area use slurry pits.
@@REDGardens ahh i see. I have a manure compost pile and that could be an option? I also use spent mushroom compost. It has a range of manures and straws, is balanced and is already composted to some extent. It's probably my favourite of all my soil amendments.
@@TobyRobb If you have good manure, definitely use it!
I think it would be interesting to put a thermometer in each of the beds that records temperatures during day/night to see wich beds cool of fast or insulate the soil good / heat up quickly in the morning sun and how much of a difference there is and link that to the development to the plants that are growing there....but that would go into the "smart gardening" or "gadget-gardening" area equipmentwize....
This is an amazing idea and as a scientist I love it
I was thinking about using a thermometer a few times at different depths to check the temperature differences, but a bunch of sensors with collected data would be great! I should look into that. Thanks for the idea.
This is so interesting. Thank you for all your hard work and I look forward to your final analysis!
🙂
Keep in Mind that different Methods are good for again different crops
Absolutely. I am going to be growing a different range of crops across the 5 methods, to see how they do.
seems expensive and counter to the term "no dig" when you put down media and fertility every year, that will be most of what the root zone of vegetables grow in. you dont dig existing soil but put in all new growing media on top, which is all loose and hopefully sterilized etc. Not sure i buy the term "no dig" when essentially new media is brought in regularly. where soil is very poor, quick profit growers bring in bags of growing media with fertilizer and grow individual plants in each bag. How different is this "no dig"? Maybe the organic crowd is easily bamboozled by hypocritical terminology?
Surely you're seeing a growth of subscribers with comments that are more and more culty/religious and detached from reality?
You raise some good points. Most methods do rely on a huge amount of material, at least for the first year, and I do wonder about the viability of it all. Still not convinced it is the best approach, but seems to work for a lot of people, at least if they have access to lots of clean compost. One of the more interesting and potential benefits of the method with lots of compost, is the lack of any real weeding, or at least greatly reduced, which can be a real time saver for several seasons. And with so much fertility and organic matter added in the first season it really reduces the amount needed for subsequent years. For me, I am not too precious about digging and disturbing the soil, I don’t think it is nearly as problematic as many people who have adopted the no-dig method believe. I think there are a lot of options between never digging at all, and regular mechanical tilling which completely mixes the soil. In this trial I decided to try not disturbing the soil at all, to see what happens. There are a lot of people who really think certain methods are obviously the best. And a lot of them are focused on the Dowding no-dig method at the moment.
@@REDGardens : for those lucky enough to be on post glacial ground or alluvial soils from regular flooding or erosion in a valley, probably plenty of nutrients are replenished and soil condition is good. others have to make do with other soils, not so good in many respects.
the sustainability of bringing in a forest worth of compost every year--if not the expense--is hardly anything to shout out about, whilst pretending soil is actually just perfect at same time. this is what i hear from these "no chemicals" proponents.
they tend to peddle latest (expensive and work intensive) organic and whatever latest craze, and also peddle decades old stories about farmers only using NPK and abusing the soil.
i've been watching lots of agricultural research and trials with farmers, and they do care about soil, but within reason, and within staying profitable.
they still tend to use too much herbicides for my liking, which i dont need to do, to terminate crops.
the "chemicals bad" line is dishonest without apology.
home grown food tastes better, but effort required, because it gets picked when ripe, and doesnt sit in cold storage for a year, which is what supermarkets do.
i've found nothing but personal testimony and empty assertions by organic crowd and organic certification bodies. they arose on a real need to overhaul how much and what gets sprayed on grown food but, nowadays just seem to peddle fairy tales and fear monger about farming practices some 60 years ago.
you can work the soil to improve it for growing crops, both short and longer term, when you do it right.
Looking forward to seeing your ongoing results from this trial. Great work!
🙂
cool set of trials. It'd be cool to see a korean natural farming (especially original, but jadam would be cool too) no till bed as well.
That is something a want to explore.
I found your channel while looking at screening methods.. I'm going to screen my new garden which is heavily laden with rock (from medicine balls to footballs down to gumball sized rock) and the reaction to that I got from the no-till dowding crowd was one of disapproval and almost straight up contempt... Then mentioning rototilling to correct tilth (I'm working with real bush dirt and very sandy) and you just get treated like you're some kind of petro-chemical round-up farmer.
I believe in my heart that picking the rocks out of the top 12" of ground and tilling in chicken manure will be better for the existing soil than just putting down 6" of new compost. How could you ever grow carrots unless you put down at least 12" of new soil (more like 16" because it settles)? Eventually after my tilth is corrected I will go low till/no-till but until then, I'll stick with the conventional.
I think part of it is because none of them have ever really worked with RAW ground. The old timers used horses and plows to clear and stoneboats to pick the rock on the land they now have the luxury to be no-tilling. Another part of it is they don't seem to understand the compost is fertility that was taken from somewhere else and because of money they can acquire it.
Picking stone and screening dirt is honest labor and is only a trade of calories for good dirt. That's where I'm at
Like this trial, this is where I have ended up. No purism, just practical elements. I have to remove the huge rocks before I start no-dig and I add a lot of amendments now too. I use really well rotten wood chip for paths bc slugs like it less if it's fine and has fewer big bits for them to hide under.
Only thing I'd guess could go wrong here might be slugs under the hay. I'm in Wales and that would worry me here. Perhaps you get enough frosts that your slug problems aren't as bad as ours?
Other than, I'd say those beds are going to be amazing. Anything I've done that thick and rich has done really well.
Look forward to seeing the results.
I've been using a no dig version for a few years and it seems to work well. I simply tarp my garden when it's not actively growing. Often this is in the fall. In the spring I remove the tarp and find a weed free flat piece of soil to plant into. I simply dig little holes to put box plants in or use a small 3 inch wide hand cultivator to loosen the soil down a few inches to sow seeds into. It is so much easier than digging or tilling and can be done earlier in the spring.
Tarping is the absolute best for killing weeds. It's the number one way to start no-dig if you're not in a rush to get produce.
Tarps can defiantly help, I really like how easy my simple garden is to work with when it is covered all winter.
Great start to another hopefully successful experiment 😊
Even if something fails it will still be a ‘successful’ experiment, but I do hope I can get good crops out of all of the methods.
As always , a fascinating and educational video which I’ll study at least twice again. Thanks.
I wonder why you don’t cover the hay with tarp now rather than later?
It would be interesting also to see if a layer of stinging nettles under cardboard and then compost would turn out. I’m trying to use stuff which is plentiful too on my two allotments in north east Scotland . I use no-dig extensively but recognise its limitations.
I tried using wood chips as a medium for growing potatoes this year but made the mistake of not giving them enough fertiliser.
Have a good Christmas Bruce. You are an inspiration!
Thanks! I was considering covering the whole thing with a tarp, but ran out of time, and want to let a fair amount of rain in. Is there a reason you think I should specifically cover the hay?
Stinging nettles would be a great addition to the layers if I was building the beds in the spring when they were abundant and nutrient rich.
@@REDGardens No specific reason to cover the hay early Bruce other than to accelerate its decomposition and keep any latent weeds suppressed.
I’m not sure though if this would make the slug problem better or worse.
I’m planning to use nettles more next year in teas and compost to make good use of it. I’ll watch how you get on with it too. Merry Christmas.
@@michaelmcclafferty3346 Merry Christmas to you too.
I just want to say that all these different methods are really all the same, they just start at different levels of decomposition.
I love the idea of framing the compost. I'll have to remember that the next time I make a garden with woodchip paths.
I'm thinking of using rocks - there is a big pile locally. Some people add, some take away....
Yeah, I got that idea from another channel (can’t remember which one) and it worked quite well. Or it made a fairly quick job even easier.
Thise beds look so good covered in ompost. Nice.
Thank you for sharing information about agriculture and it can be my motivation and experience in farming
It's my pleasure
I grow everything in boxes in compost I make myself it's so simple with excellent results. I so appreciate your meticulous documentation of your experiments. Much appreciated.
I can imagine you could get a lot out of growing in compost like that.
so, have you added IMO's into your compost so that the plants have an established micro fungal base to develope from??????
No, I haven’t. Something to consider.
👉 Good example of dissemination of practical knowledge to be followed by educational institutions.
Glad you think so!
Thanx Red Gardens
Showing what doesn't work is really helpful so I know what works best
Yeah, failure or less successful trials can be really educational!
Very good presentation. I predict each method will have good results.
I hope so, though i think there will be issues with the straw and hay.
Only thing I don't like is the cardboard, all kinds of unknown contaminates. Go thick enough with the compost and bale's,
it's unnecessary. Like adding garbage to your growing space.
I have tried without cardboard, and the scutch grass grew right through everything else.
So....using hay. I take it that you don't have Grazon problems in your area?
I don’t think so.
Cool experiment! Thank you for walking us through it.
🙂
It's great to see comparative study. In my opinion, much depend on the quality of compost. But perhaps your amendments make the bid difference. Your approach is bery intelligent, all methods will do well.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! I agree that so much depends on the quality of the compost, and the other materials, but I felt it was important to work with what I could easily get, as most people can only get poor quality compost.
If your springs are mild/cool and moist, try growing the determinant tomato variety called Siletz. It was bred in Oregon for that exact purpose.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Cool. I do wonder how the fresh wood chips would perform considering your experience with the municipal woody compost in the potato trial..
Yeah, it would have been good. I suspect it would need a few seasons before it really got going and we were able o for good crops in it.
I tried using bales of straw as mulch. It would have been great except for the wheat seeds that germinated constantly. I love your videos and will be trying many things I've seen here :) Thank you for sharing!
I am hoping that there isn't too many seeds in this straw, or in the hay.
😁 thank you. I just started building my no dig about 2 months ago, happy growing.
Happy growing all around! Hope you have a good crop!
First-year no-till is actually a process and a practice, not a "one-shot kills all weeds." No-till is all about creating a healthy soil microbiome over time. Things I saw in the video that were defeating your purpose:
1. Yanking new grass and weeds out of the soil after you've done the cardboard cover process completely defeats having done the cardboard process. It disturbs and aerates the soil and that activates and continues to produce new weeds. Tarping it for a year as mentioned in the video is not going to substantially change results. It's not do it once and kill everything. 2. When first starting a bed, mow it down as close to the ground as possible before you do anything. This is the right time to pull out all of the deep-rooted and rhizobial weeds. At this point you don't have a microbiome worth saving, being that of a weed factory or a lawn. So in addition to mowing short, it's permissible and desirable to pull out any deep-rooted plants like scutch grass, bind weed or Creeping Charlie. This is the only time in no till to do this. After the time under the cardboard you only cut plants off at the surface, leaving the roots to decompose and starving them due to lack of photosynthesis until they die off completely. That may take several iterations, even longer with bind weed etc but it will happen.
3. Soak the cardboard thoroughly so that it will decompose on schedule even as it blocks light and air from the weeds. Immediately cover with compost or mulch to keep the moisture in. I've done this procedure successfully with as little as three weeks before planting, cutting holes for transplanting, although a month or two is optimal.
4. You will still get weeds! But greatly reduced in frequency and volume as you maintain the plot. There will be rhizobial weeds with more stored energy than seeds. Resist the satisfying temptation to pull them out of the ground as this will just activate other seeds that never would have germinated except for this aeration and disturbance. Instead hoe them off at ground level like all the other weeds to come up. Normal weeds will cease producing after a couple of iterations of hoeing them, but scutch grass etc will take many more iterations before it gives up. But it will give up. If we're ripping it out of the soil it will never give up. At the beginning of my season I spent two hours or more weeding each week in my garden. Each week it was less time. Halfway through the season I spen5 about 5-10 minutes each week as I'm roaming around the garden doing other things.
5. You'll have weeds from other sources. A few will come in the wind or by birds and many more likely to come in in compost or mulches. A great many weeds will come in anytime you have bare soil not actively planted or shaded by growing plants. That is their job-nature hates bare soil. No-till is substantially weed-free because of a well-maintained and active healthy soil and cutting off plants at the surface leaving their roots to decompose, whether weeds or crops. It's never going to look like a herbicided desert but it will be substantially weed free. It needs to be continuously planted or at the least covered, preferably with compost or mulch.
6. Cover crops during the offseason are your best protection against weeds.
That is not what I have found at all. And most promoters of no-till methods claim it is a one-shot method, so I decided to test it.
Hi! Thanks for the knowledge and experience sharing. I've learnt and taken good information from your videos. I just stumbled onto this mulches lecture (after watching your video) where it is said that lasagna mulching, cardboard and sheet mulches in general have a negative impact on gas and water flow through the soil, thus in soil quality for plant growth. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks and cheers from Argentina. link to video: th-cam.com/video/NXL9n2KNm1E/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for the link, I'll try to watch it when I have some free time. Like a lot of these things I think it really depends on context, the types of soil and the differences in climate - Oregon has very different climate to Ireland. I think there would definitely be some issues to start with, but with time I suspect things might settle down. But the reason for doing this type of exploration is to see how it works.
Hi there! In my no dig green house I have mulched the wall paths with chopped corn stalks. Do they need to be kept moist or will they decompose by themselves in a few years? Also, I want to mulch the plants with corn stalks too. Does the mulch around the plants have to be composted or just fresh dried corn stalks finely chopped. Note, I will have drip irrigation under this mulch
Hi there, I don't really know, as I am only just starting with my own explorations.
Looking good, we have the lovely Charles Dowding in the U.K. who has been using no dig for several decades. Would be interesting to see in your climate how your crops compares with ours in the south of the U.K. have started using no dig on my own new small allotment plots, so it’s all new to me
I think our climates are a bit different. I think it is not so warm in the summer here and with more rain.
Some interesting comparisons lie ahead. Thanks as always.
Yeah, I am really looking forward to seeing what happens.
My method starts in the fall. I have a lot of leaves on my property and a leaf shredder. I put down a layer of shredded leaves, A couple of inches of compost. And then I drench it with indigenous micro organisms. Then I cover it with black landscape material For the winter. In the springtime I do another drench and then cover it for 3 weeks to 4 weeks. Then I plant. This will be the 3rd year I'm doing it and my harvest has increased each year. With almost no insect problems at all except for maybe snails. I have a pile of wood chips that has been decomposing for 2 years. I grow winecap mushrooms in them. Now that they have been decomposed and are filled with fungal activity I'll be probably putting that in the soil also. I make any fertilizer I need from weeds and comfrey I have in my yard. I even make my own fish fertilizer. no digging and cheap.
That sounds like a lovely and productive method! I wish I had access to an abundance of leaves like that. I will have to wait a few more years, or decades, for the trees around here to grow a lot more!
Can't wait to find out what happens. Now just have to wait for growing season. Sigh.
I know that feeling ... I am trying to be patient!!
I love watching these trials, thank you for doing them!
🙂
What stops the hay and cardboard from blowing away in the winter storms?
The cardboard will be covered with lots of material. The hay is still in fairly entangled blocks, so it should be fairly stable. The straw is probably going to blow around a bit until it gets wet enough.
I use Ruth Stout/ lasagna methods and my advice is: use straw! I will never use hay again. The weeds and grasses that come with hay are not worth it even if you get spoiled for free. Keep the straw deep year round and weeds will remain minimal and easy to pull if they do happen to make it through. This is because the energy will be put into finding the sun and not growing roots.
Thanks for the advice. I have used both this batch of straw and hay in other experiments, and the straw seemed to have a lot more seeds in it! Leftover wheat seeds from incomplete threshing. The hay didn’t seem to have any seeds, but that was a limited trial, and it will be interesting to see how it turns out. So I guess it really depends on the quality of the material you can get.
Very nice video, we appreciate the amount of work and time involved here. I was hoping one of the plots involved leaves, mostly because they are an abundant free source most people have access to. Also want everyone to know that your municipal collection sites for leave possibly pay to haul off their leaves like our city does. They bring me dump truck loads of free leaves, and tell me they want to find other people to take leaves because they have to pay the county transfer station if they dump there.
I would have liked to get leaves to try, but that isn’t a resource that is really available around here. There has been some from the Main Street of our little village, from the big trees on the green in front of the church, but there is not a lot and it gets mixed in with a lot of litter and debris from the road. There just aren’t many large trees and parklands around here, and the high winds tend to blow any leaves away. But if you can get leaves like that they can be a great resource for a garden.
Was it an active decision to plant nothing instead of some kind of cover crop? Really interested to understand your reasoning :)
Main reason is to make sure I can remove any weeds that make it through the mulch. If I planted a cover crop, any scutch grass that survived would remain hidden, and become more established, and it would be harder to get rid of it later. And it is probably too cold for seeds to germinate.
When you get the chance I would like to hear your method of scientific biases on how well terra peta works. I mean all I hear is it best thing in the world. But you never know with claims now a days. So if you ever feel the desire I would love to hear it from you.
It is interesting stuff, and there is a lot of enthusiastic support for it. I haven’t done proper trials yet to be able to come to any opinion a bout it all. The theory seems sound, but making it work in practice is the key. Bast on what other people are experiencing, it can be really beneficial in poor soil with low fertility, but not necessarily enough of a benefit in good fertile soil to be worth it. And you need to make sure it is made properly and changed with fertility before adding it to the soil. I hope to do proper trials next year.
Build micro biotics, instead of destroy existing.
👍
I'm really looking forward to the results from this trial
🙂
I can't tell you how excited I am for the Lasagna bed. Just remember though, the end goal of permaculture is to create an ecosystem. Something should be eating your slugs.
Oh... I just thought of something... I wonder if you could house some pet shop hedgehogs and give them movable paddocks in the garden. Like rotational grazing but it's cute hedgehogs eating slugs. I imagine it would rival the Guinea pig ranches youtube keeps suggesting after I looked up guinea pig vs rabbit farm.
Ducks apparently love to eat slugs.
Getting something to eat the slugs will be tricky, especially finding something that won’t also eat the vegetables. I had a big hedgehog in the gardens a few years ago and suspect it was the thing eating my broccoli heads! They eat more than just slugs.
@@REDGardens That's why you'd move them. Any animal that stays in an area too long will consume all the resources in that area whether they like them or not. By limiting the time each area is fenced in, you don't give the animals enough time to devastate an area after they run out of juicy slugs.
A factor you have to consider when dealing with wildlife pressure is where are they getting their food from besides your garden. If the answer is "there isnt any wild food for them" you have the answer to both problems. They're just surviving in the new ecosystems we made on the only food available. We need to create space for them or they'll create space where we dont want them.
Very intresting. Merry Christmas from Sweden
Thanks. And merry Christmas from Canada! (I am home visiting family).
Great video, 😁
Thanks! 😁 .
Thanks for another great video we love your work !!
🙂
Nice experiment. Can't wait to see how it turns out.
🙂
fascinating as always, thanks very much
🙂
Great trial, looking forward to the results!
So am I!
Very interesting Bruce, the Ruth Stout method does seem like a very large, shallow compost heap, I suspect it will not be overly successful, it will be interesting to see the results.
That is the one method I suspect will be least successful in this context.
I really like your experimental approach.
🙂
То же самое делаю в Сибири на моих 30ти сотках. Мне - 70. Всё получается без напряга.
Nice. Siberia is quite a different climate to Ireland!
Great stuff.
Where did you get this municipal compost. I'm in Roscommon and can't find a source for this anywhere.
I buy it from as suppliers in one of the local towns. It comes from a company called Enrich.
@@REDGardens Thanks for that. Really need a good load of compost to start off a no dig.
These beds are looking very good!!! 👍
Yeah, I am so glad to finally get them done and delighted that they looked so good in the winter sunlight.
You are a gift.
Thank you for your work.
🌻
Wow, thank you!
Horse or cattle manure?
Birdy
If I had a good local supply (i.e. clean without risk of herbicide damage to the crops) I would use it. Most of the cable farms around here use slurry pits. But I should put in the effort to look for someone locally I can trust.
I'm eager to see the results of this trail. Especially the one with the aged wood chips. What Paul Gautschi is unfortunately not very clear about is that the wood chips he uses, previously run through his chicken coup. They are enriched with chicken manure. Many people trying this method were disappointed because they tried it with regular wood chips. Maybe it works better with the aged wood chips.
I the in on some extra nitrogen would really help in a lot of situations. I have heard that some people wait until the first flush of leaves in the spring, to capture the nutrients and nitrogen the trees bring up from the roots. I think this would help a lot.
Grazon being applied to hay fields has basically destroyed the Ruth Stout method here. I hope it's not an issue for you
I hope it isn’t an issue. I could not get a full answer from the hay supplier about what had been sprayed, if anything.
You may be able to use your municipal recycle center like I do and substitute free grass clippings for hay. I have done this for years and not had any visible herbicide damage to any of my bean, peppers, or tomatoes, and I use huge quantities of it. The only rumor I have heard is using grass clippings from a golf course was bad, possibly they used grazon type herbicide. But I'm thinking the feed and weed fertilizer for home owners probably doesn't contain any persistent herbicides.
Cool, Using soil beneath compost piles is clever, as is placing fertilizer below other layers, so it simply can’t wash away, and organic fertilizer like that doesn’t leach into water tables, so that isn’t an issue.
It will be interesting to see if the soil is a good option in the end, and how it compares to the other options. One thing to be mindful of is organic fertiliser can actually wash away, though perhaps not as fast as the conventional soluble fertilisers. To test this fill a large pot with manure or whatever other organic fertiliser you use, and leave it in the rain for a few weeks (or water it lightly every few days, enough for some of the water to flow through he bottom of the pot). If you collecting the water that flows through the pot, it will most likely be a dark colour and work really well as a liquid feed, because a fair amount of the fertility washed through with the rain.
@@REDGardens true like wood ash washes away in slash and burn…. It also depends what state the organic fertilizer is in, more soluble or insoluble.
Cool trial - I am very interested in this as I'm a Dowding/Perkins devotee, and it works for me in southern Ontario, so I haven't tried anything else. I like the addition of the biologically active compost as well. I understand the idea of waiting to see if there is weed pressure before planting, but is it worthwhile to plant a single row in the spring with a full season crop (or crops) just to see how things work out?
You likely know that JM Fortier is a fan of ramial woodchips, but he harvests his in the spring to capture the early flush of nutrients. I wish that I could find spring ramial wood chips here.
I was thinking of sowing something, but decided to wait. I have had issues with getting rid of these kinds of weeds in the past and want to make sure they are really gone before starting things. But I will see how things are going in the spring, as you say it would be interesting to test how a few things will grow at the beginning.
We use cover crops like winter rye and like to sheet mulch. We do have an issue with cold soil in the spring here in USA growing zone 3.
I do want to try using cover crops. How do you kill them, or do they winter kill in your area?
@@REDGardens When I am done with an area in the fall I plant winter rye which keeps a green root in the ground and keeps nasty weeds away, it winters over under the snow and starts growing again in the cold wet spring and hits straw stage in early June and I cut it with a heavy duty weed wacker and rake it up for mulch. We can't plant till around June 1st. In rotation areas that have no crop I use Buckwheat because it grows so fast. In the fall I sow winter rye seed into the buck wheat and then cut the buck wheat down, walk on it/ roll it and leave it as a mulch for the rye to grow up through. Buckwheat breaks down very fast.
It's great you have all those materials; for most of us we have to use what we can get/produce. This type of video will help demonstrate what resource we might want to concentrate on getting.
I once tried the Straw method which proved to be ideal slug habitat.
It took me a while to get in all this materials, and had to buy a lot of it in, so definitely can be a resource intensive process! I suspect I will have the same slug issues with the straw and hay, but have a few methods that might help to reduce the impact of this pest and make the method more viable.
@@REDGardens I really look forward to seeing the results next year.
Check out quillaja / soapbark extract for no till especially on compacted soils, I used it on black clay in my front yard and it made the soil drain so easily really worked so well
I don’t think that is available at all around here, but will keep an eye out.
@@REDGardens it's something youde have to order online it's kinda pricey but I bought a kilo from China for about 150 us and used it alot last year haven't even made a dent in the bag I bought
Thanks Bruce. Wish I had the room to experiment as well. Looking forward to spring and the garden once all this snow is gone. Merry Christmas
It is so good to have the space to try things like this! Merry Christmas to you too.