I'm still trying to get my head around mulch. Do roots always grow deep enough to hit the soil, even when you have six inches of mulch? I'm guessing they can't get nutrients from the mulch itself. When you chop and drop, the plant gets added to the top of the mulch. How do the nutrients get down into the soil?
Yes, the woodchips aren't really bioavaiable nutrient. There's still carbon and nitrogen and oxygen and such, but it's all locked inside very thick cell walls of wood and locked up in things called lignins. Mushrooms break this apart and then make the nutrient available, but it takes time (years). In the meantime, it's just a physical thing sitting there. That physical barrier shades the soils and acts as a shield against winds. A rock would do the same job - only the rock won't turn into soil (well that's kind of not true, but it takes so long that lets just say it's true). As the woodchips break down, there are some things in the wood that bacteria can break down. It requires nitrogen to combine with the carbon in order to do this, so it takes the nitrogen from any that it can find in the soil. In this way, the woodchips right at the soil level will pull nitrogen out of the soil and deplete it. This area of effect is only about 1-2mm thick though, so nothing to worry about - as long as the woodchips remain on top of the soil and do not get tilled in. A woodchip here and there is fine, but a whole-sale tilling of woodchips into a garden bed is a bad idea. It will starve nitrogen out of the garden for about 3 years (after which actually it will be better than it was before). Plant roots are pretty smart, and when they see nitrogen deficient mulch zone and nitrogen full soil just below it, they just chase the nutrients and go there. You may see some roots in the woodchips, but the plants are pretty smart and go where the nutrients are. For chop and drop.... If you could wait a day and then grab that leaf and put it under a microscope you'd have half the answer. A few things happen. Rain drops splashing on your soils and woodchips and leaves will carry bacteria which exist on those down to the soil level. (The cut leaves also would be covered in bacteria before they were chopped). All this stuff eats the leaves microscopically, and as they do they live and die. Rainwater then flushes their bodies along with stuff like the humic acid they create down into the soils. Also... At night when it's cooler you get the macro life coming in. Worms will actually come up from the ground and eat the leaves and then return back to the soil before the sun comes up and poop it back out. I'm going to pin this - lots of good info here, thanks for the comment! This could be a future video.
You grow your plaNts in the soil NOT WOODCHIP LAYER! as you chop and drop the material breaks down into carbon and leaving behind its nutes . For the soil
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy regarding the chopping and dropping - you mentioned that worms come up to eat the leaves but doesn't it also encourage slugs? I'd like to chop and drop around my veggies but afraid of slugs and other pests.
I got about 2 feet of wood chips down to nothing in the space of about 2 months... I guess it depends of your soil biology... It's always easier to let the plant grow deeper roots (with intervention from you) than intervene.... Mulch is a time bomb :) as all seeds are..... as the forest is,..... :) For some weird reasons, I had to plant my toms and peppers *LOWER* than, you know,, ground level... Lots of my plants did NOT survive :) but LOTS of them DID :) So, you need to observe.....
These concepts are revolutionary and so dramatically changing the way I garden. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! No bare ground, don't disturb the soil - cut off weed photosynthesis (brilliant), chop and drop, plant densely (guilds), mulch more - water less. What a joy to wake up every morning to see how I might implement the things you're teaching us in my own yard and to pass on to others what I'm learning. Most of us don't have the means to make a significant impact on the world for the better, but if we all do our part in creating even a little food forest, we really are changing our world and making it a better, more beautiful and sustainable place to live. I don't know how you do it - working full time, raising a family, constantly improving your food forest, and I'm sure a myriad of other things behind the scenes that we don't see. You present a balanced life that is a joy to see as well. And some how with all you're doing - you manage to make these awesome educational videos - I can't thank you enough! P.S. I'm editing my post after contemplating how you manage to do so much - I figured it out - your wife has to be a huge piece of the behind the scenes puzzle :-) And for the record, I agree with her, some grass is lovely.
Absolutely, you definitely nailed it. My wife is a fantastic woman, she does a lot for sure. For the rest of it, the whole point of this kind of gardening is that it's a lot of work to set up, but then becomes self-sufficient in short order. For example, I film that main food forest strip all the time, but my interaction with that area is basically just to walk around and pick fruit. The food forest is therapy, it's not work. (Once it's up and planted out). Right now, I'm handling all the side stuff like consultation, videos, etc, because Covid Lockdowns are keeping us working from home. No driving to work saves me 2 hours a day. Being able to take a quick 15 min break and answer comments. Taking my lunch outside and filming a video. Honestly though the no-driving to work thing is massive. I'm going to be a bit sad when we all have to drive back into the office like slaves again. It's so wasteful and stupid. Speaking of which, back to work for me.
I have learned so much from you! I watch your videos almost daily; sometimes a few a day, sometimes I re-watch. So much to absorb. This is by far, my favorite channel on permaculture and food foresting. I've gotten outside now the last 6 months, my yard is starting to take on a new look. I had given up 20 years ago, after spending thousands of dollars on plants, watering constantly, and watching them die in the frost. Your channel and others has given me an understanding of how to take care of the soil, so it will take care of the plants. Thank you so much!
I live in Texas and recieve about 20 inches of annual precipitation. I have been converting my dry dirt yard to a food forest for three years now. I brought in quite a bit of wood chip mulch but in the past three years I have relied heavily on the naturally occurring fast growing weeds for ground cover and shade. It is a struggle to decide when to cut them down every year because I don't want to have to clear heavy brush forest 🤣 This isn't a question just information on how I am turning this dry landscape around. It is working and evolving different plants have come because of the increased organic matter and shade. This year it seems my own plantings established easier because of this. 👍 to you and your videos of your journey it has inspired me a lot!
Good work. And what you are doing now is actually by far the hardest part of the journey. Once that snowball starts rolling, it's almost impossible to stop the regrowth. The hardest part is definitely where you are right now.
I love using the weeds you have! I do this too. My garden this spring was incredibly dense with dandelions! They made excellent green manure for my fruit trees and bushes after they finished flowering.
I know this comment is two years old now, how is it going for you? I have the exact same dilemma, my garden looks like a weedy jungle as I basically stopped mowing several years ago because I think things growing is better than nothing growing, and I have noted various pioneers and even unexpected volunteers popping up and the idea is to gradually replace the "mess" with things I want growing, but it's taking time and it is hard sometimes to know what to do with the untidiness, neighbours think I'm crazy as does my family sometimes, lol.
@thehillsidegardener3961 As my trees have grown in the shade has been increasing and the weeds are changing. I think last year (The 5th Year) I let the weeds get out of hand with their happiness at the improved environment in general. Especially the soil with much more organic matter. The Food Forest is evolving beautifully if not in standard way. This year I will be mowing the weeds aggressively at the highest setting on my mower so as not to kill them but keep them protecting the soil but out of my way. I still may grow a few to use as shade or mulch but each year it has become less necessary with the maturity of the Food Forest.
Oh, since we needed a few buckets of silt to fill some garden trenches with to replace some of the heavy construction clay, we dug circles in the lawn in various spots, each one to fill a bucket with, and this breaks up the perfectly flat ground that sheets water away, so now there are some lower spots that will catch the water and sink it into the ground. Even in a completely flat area, one can guide water and collect it more efficiently~
That's great! There's an African technique of gardening called Xai or Zai, where they dig pits and dump twigs and manure into it. Sounds somewhat similar to what you are doing. One caution in doing that, you will depress the water table around you. You are basically digging dry-wells. That can often be a very good thing to do, but it does have some scenarios where you can dry out surrounding areas.
If you've ever dumped a bucket of dirt on the ground and spread it out so much that the dirt seems to disappear in the grass, then that's what i'm doing in reverse, filling a bucket with dirt from one spot, then forking the sides into the hole until it mostly goes away, hopefully with enough intact clumps of grass that it grows over and disappears. Besides, the low area of the garden is three feet below the height of the flat area around it, so the water table isn't going to be any more affected by two-foot circles an inch lower. All the clay from the sides of the sunken area is also planned to be used for various water projects, nothing goes to waste~
Exactly. This is why so many gardening guides come with prescriptive watering like twice per day, this amount of water, in the morning and afternoon. It's because 90% of their water evaporates away. It's an extreme waste of water and there's no need for it. Just deep mulch the area, and when you water, you are watering the entire sponge of mulch, which then slowly releases the water over a week. The thick mulch prevents evaporation. The density of planting prevents heat at ground level, but also winds from wicking it all away.
This year, I have an arrangement with an old gardening lady from my fb group. I do her lawn work and I get a 10x10ish spot on the side of her garage to grow in. I put some 2" mini swales in and deep mulched. I can only get over there once a week, if that, and I have to haul buckets to water it. It's going to be a great experiment in STUN gardening.
For sure. I should also mention that even though these beds look like STUN (sheer total utter neglect - for anyone who didn't know what that stands for), they actually aren't. I'm out there looking at them and monitoring them - it just so happens they don't need any help from me. Well, I will probably water that one tomato patch if it doesn't rain today. So it's not so much as we can completely neglect our annuals - they are annuals so they definitely need a little help, especially in the first 2-4 weeks. But it's more that if we do it right, we just simply don't need to intervene twice a day because 90% of our watering evaporated away. STUN works best for perennial systems. Even Mark Shephard says he only "STUN"s his new systems after the first year is over and he does give them a little help at first. But these gardens just feel like STUN because they are so easy. The mulch helps, the plant density helps, the plant diversity helps, but all 3 together is like cheating.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy That's why I said it was an experiment. Plus I started from seed late so I'll be happy if I get any produce at all from it. I'm mostly concerned about biomass for building fertility since it was a grass to garden transition.
I don't know why but I like to think that mulch is a sponge that let go of the "old" water when "new" water arrives. My under mulch, even leaf mulch, is always humid and so the soil under it. Let just say I don't water my garden very often during the growing season!
The last three summers we had record drought/heat summers here in Germany. Month without rain, temperatures over 30°C. I not once watered my lawn. It stayes green while that of all my neighbours turned "Mars", as you said :D I just stopped mowing. The grass was not growing, but it stayed alive and green. Had to water a few newly planted trees, shrubs and perennials, though.
Another great video. Biological activity in the soil greatly reduces the need water. Building soil structure on lawns by adding sifted compost and composted manure is a good way to do this . I grow more beans that we could use to save seed to use as a cover crop if a bed is harvested and nothing is planted to continue to feed the soil . This also gives me more material for compost and fixes nitrogen back. But usually I am planting something after something is harvested( usually something that matures quickly and cool weather tolerant like radishes or lettuce).
I can’t agree with you more about getting rid of my front yard lawn and turning it into a food forest just like my backyard. I am still having this conversation with my wife, a pretty tough situation to win especially living in a subdivision with an HOA.
Yes, you have a whole extra battle to fight. A good way to go about dealing with an HoA is to use mimicry. Mimic the looks of your neighbours landscaping and just replace useless stuff with edible stuff. The goal is to not stand out - at least not in an extreme way. Stuff like Collard greens can be really ornamental. Jerusalem artichokes are very pretty. Etc. Of course that's a lot harder when everyone ONLY had sod grass.
Thank you so much for being a constant source of information! There is so much knowledge I've gained from your channel that I utilize every time I go out into my garden. I wouldn't be half the permaculturist I am now if I never found your videos.
I'm so glad to help! This is exactly why I spend my free time doing this - getting people up and going faster. Thanks for letting me know you've found useful info in my videos :)
16:30 WOW! Why did I never think of this? This is one of those AH-HA! moments that make your channel so good. Why did I never think of this? This is such a good point. The entire video was worth it even just for that one single point. How many people only water their plants?
Thanks. Obviously this also comes with a disclaimer that we should be really careful how much water we use in dry climates. This makes the deep mulch, plant density and especially plant/variety selection aspects absolutely critical.
You make so many good points. Thank you. Dr. Elaine Ingram is such a great source for soil science and I have been diving into all that information lately. It’s fascinating and makes so much sense once you start learning about it all.
My area has had a very dry spring so far and all of these points are great. I am going to go out and mulch my poor Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes. I didn't want to suppress them when sprouting, but they are having a rough time with water retention right now.
This was a really good comprehensive guide! This is why I love this channel, you really get into it. So much valuable information in here. I also like how you show areas that are doing poorly and not just areas that are doing well and pretending you are some gardening God like other gardeners do. We can learn so much in our failed areas, and I come here to learn, not to see some fake life where all the bad stuff is hidden. It is actually empowering, because there's no way I'm going to do as much as you do. So it lets me know I can also succeed.
Im still working on getting a mixed annual/perennial bed that I am happy with. This year the clover and lettuce have made friends, and I have decided to leave it that way. I will see what happens. Nature also provided me with a settler's footprint (plantain) that I will chop and drop and a dandelion to eat.
We got about 1" of rain between two thunderstorms over the last two weekends. I'm thrilled as I probably don't need to go out and water the majority of the yard for at least a week or two (maybe a month if we get another good thunderstorm). I'll still go water the veggies maybe once this week as they're still fairly young, but that's a huge load off as I mostly handwater the plants that I'm establishing. 1" was enough to fill up our largest rain barrels (at 200 gallons each) and all that rainwater is pretty easy to use for deep watering between summer thunderstorms. I really wish I had more storage though, the plants really love rainwater. Totally agree that you have to observe the plants. I don't usually pull back the mulch, but mostly look at the growth points for 'taco' leaf shapes. Usually a couple inches of mulch will hold water for weeks around here. I'll plant most of my xeric plants differently as they don't appreciate as much moisture (some do, but a lot of the pioneer species need lean / dry soil). Thanks for the reminder that I need to go finish mulching our raised beds now that most of the seeds have sprouted. :)
I've watched (and loved!) most of your videos and I'm trying to figure out what to do in my situation. I live in a dry climate that gets only 11 inches of rain per year (Idaho, USDA zone 5, 5000' elevation). I'm guessing that deep mulch and swales alone won't cut it, I will need to water almost everything long term, even if only irregularly. Do you have to water everything, or is your precipitation in Ontario sufficient to remove that chore? How do you water, other than precipitation? Drip system? Pulling a hose around acres of property? Sprinklers? I'm preparing to convert my new 1-acre property from all grass and sprinklers (groan) to a food forest and I'm not sure if/how I should transition away from the current in-ground sprinkler system, and whether I should plan on watering by hand, sprinklers, or drip system. Doing it wrong will cost tons of labor later, so I'd like to get it right. Also, if you can recommend any permaculture or back-to-eden resources that focus on dry or high-desert climates that would be very helpful. Thank you for your videos, they are FANTASTIC!
It's going to be a major drought year, so it's good to spread every water efficiency and set up such things for the gardens as quickly as possible, as infrastructure does nothing until it's implemented, but after it is, it's working on the area it's set up in. Last fall we had a dozen weeks of no rain, and in areas where the trees shaded the ground, the lawn was very noticeably greener and longer, even different types of plants start growing in those areas, we have cinquefoil and indica in those places, so we can potentially grow strawberries in those places and they would do well there.
In that dozen weeks in the fall of no rain, I prolly should have watered my strawberry patch a little, but it turned out fine and the plants look amazing now, even though only twenty or so plants have flowered out of a few hundred, and the variety that germinated was from super sour strawberries, and the ones from the patch have varying amounts of sour, but it's okay as it's still genetic diversity, and we found some super sweet strawberries that we're starting from seed now, so over time each strawberry will taste both sweet and sour, making it perfect to use in cooking~
Just getting started on my permaculture food forest so this is new for me. I already have several fruit trees planted in a lawn and everything is very flat. Not sure how I get thick enough mulch around my trees without killing them in order to keep things moist but my main question is, do you water with over head sprinklers so everything gets wet in your guild or drip or what? How do you get everything watered. Thanks and loving your videos. ❤
Thanks 😊 I don't really water to be honest, we get decent rain. I think I watered once this year and once last year when it didn't rain for 2 months, but thats pretty abnormal for us here. The thick mulch also helps a ton, because it stores just so much water. The dense guild plantings also help a ton to reduce wind loss via evaporation, and keep the soil shaded also. For the mulch, you can go thick without smothering plants too badly, as long as it stays moist it will break down really quickly. 6 inches of mulch will turn into 1 inch in a year or so. The most important thing with watering is just dense planting and soil shading (from dense planting). If you are in a dry climate, use appropriate plants, so that overall water needs are low. Once established, you really shouldn't ever need to water. Whatever natural spaces you have around you survive, and that's how they do it - dense planting and shade. Obviously the first few years, you won't have that developed yet, and you may need a little watering here and there. But that's all the more reason to go with thick mulch that will hold and store that water better. When I water I just water from the top. I try to minimize splashing. For example, I will try to use plant leaves and stems to help bring the water down to the soil with lower energy (i.e. kinetic energy of the water absorbed by the leaves of plants like comfrey and rhubarb, which minimizes splashing on the ground, and thus spreading fungal diseases to plants). In the annual gardens, I tend to water those more often (annuals after all), and there I really try to water from below when possible
I know my wife is! lol And I'm way past my allotment # of mentions of that topic. All jokes aside, she reigns me in, which is actually needed. I have a habitual nature of getting consumed by the things I get interested in.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I can tell that about you and appreciate it. I'm the same. Keep the seasons going, i'll be watching to see if a new guild forms over the grass at some point! I expect it might happen, one day....
wood chip piles form a nice cooler microclimate next to them. I make big berms next to plants that don't like the heat so much, like my currants and cane fruit. It really helps in the crazy 90 degree May days we've had here in New England
Good tip! I do find that a fresh pile of chips can actually get really hot though, so I think it depends on the size of and age of the pile. I've put a large pile of fresh chips next to certain plants in the spring just to cheat some heat into the soil around them.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy ah, yes I should have specified that these are cold piles, having sat around for at least a year. They never get hot, but are full of lovely coprinellus mycelium which keeps moisture moving through the pile and breaking them down slowly into wonderful soil.
Great video! Just tonight, it seems that I talked my hubby into being okay with the rest of the lawn being turned into a food forest, lol. We always sit under the apple tree when relaxing so why not have more of that 🤔 It worked! I’m so excited to plant more trees. Can you inform as to how the nutrients go from the leaves chopped and dropped on top of the wood chips down through the layer and into the soil? I have been confused about this for awhile now. I usually pull back my chips and place the leaves directly on the soil because I just can’t understand how this works. I saw that Kevin Farnworth also asked this question on this video. Thanks!
If you could wait a day and then grab that leaf and put it under a microscope you'd have half the answer. A few things happen. Rain drops splashing on your soils and woodchips and leaves will carry bacteria which exist on those down to the soil level. (The cut leaves also would be covered in bacteria before they were chopped). All this stuff eats the leaves microscopically, and as they do they live and die. Rainwater then flushes their bodies along with stuff like the humic acid they create down into the soils. Also... At night when it's cooler you get the macro life coming in. Worms will actually come up from the ground and eat the leaves and then return back to the soil before the sun comes up and poop it back out.
Hi, Keith! I've watched some of your videos and I have to say they are really inspiring as well as comprehensive which is very important for me as there is very few information on the permaculture theme in my native language so far. So thank you for sharing! I have some questions and I would appreciate so much if you could find some time to help me figure it out: 1. As for the planting density, I get the idea, but I wonder if it could be a somewhat bad thing when it comes to harvesting? Let's say, you have to step on some of your strawberry plants to get to those which are harder to reach. Or how you collect your peaches without disturbing or even hurting the plants groing in your peach guild? Thank you. 2. I wonder if there is a video showing the best permacultural way of planting seedlings. In different sources in my native language I find controversial opinions, like "Dig a hole 1 meter deep, put there some stones and sand for drenage, then fill it with the rich loose soil or compost, plant the seedling and water it with 5 to 10 buckets of water " and then "What you need is to minimise the disturbance of your soil - dig the pit just as big as your seedling's root systems size (i.e. the actual pot size), put out the seedling from the pot, place it into the pit add a bit soil to fill the voids and water it a bit - that's it". Those got me so confused... I have bought a small virgin land plot of only 0,25 acre :) But I still hope I can do my best to follow permacultural essentials while creating a tiny food forest there... It's just not than easy to be sure which way is truely about permaculture.. :) So I would appreciate if you could spare some time to help me understand :) Thank you so much in advance! P.S. I really hope I got your name correct - I found it out from my local youtube permaculture channel where I first saw a video about your foodforest and then I've followed your channel and somehow I didn't find your name anywhere there, so I'm sorry if I got it wrong :)
You found my guild guide after and left a comment saying I answered many of these in that video. Just to elaborate and help out more... For 1), there is always going to be a trade off between planting density and ease of harvest. Find your balance and choose what you prefer. For me, I actually want plant density. That means some fruit is annoying to harvest. I want to maximize the energy and food in my ecosystem, and the resiliency of my forest as a whole. I value the entire forest strength as a priority above any single element in it. However if I instead prioritized a single peach tree, I would plant less densely And in fact, I do have a couple peaches where I intentionally plant less densely around them, because I do want to ensure some ease of harvest and ensure the peach dominates that area, so I get some of my favorite food guaranteed. In other areas I plant much more densely, understanding that each individual plant yield may decrease, but my overall system yield will increase. Especially the wildlife. Having some super dense areas like this can ensure you have a robust insect biome to protect and pollinate all your other plants. I feel it is super important to have sections of a food forest like this. Almost completely donated to nature. I will add a link for 2) question
Just on 14:30, I'm assuming you mean to run a system like Charles Dowding, using compost as the mulch layer, and not putting a compost layer on top of the woodchip layer? That would be burying the woodchips, which I know you are against due to Nitrogen tie-up?
Oh yes good catch, 100%. Definitely don't put a 3 inch thick compost layer on top of woodchips and then grow in that for a season. In that specific example, you could just pull woodchips back from an area, put compost down , and then and then put the woodchips back on top, or even just use the comfrey chop and drop as the mulch, if it were done regularly and nice and thick. Carbon heavy mulches like woodchips stay on top of the soil - unless you are deliberately making a hugelkulture bed with it and are okay with "killing your bed" for a few years as it develops slowly. Those beds will eventually be incredible, they just take some time to break down and end the nitrogen tie-up. Great point, thanks for making it.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I took this as a thin layer of compost being slowly watered in. That may have been just my container perspective. Thanks for clearing it up.
Hi! Excellent video. The recent frost here in Northbrook Ontario killed a lot of my tomatoes and some peppers. I am in the process of replacing som of the tomatoes with some extra plants that I just happened to have, and I am still not done planting. I want to put some garlic randomly in with the tomatoes as a companion. If I mulch just after I put them in, will the garlic be able to find it’s way past the mulch? I have a ton of fresh wood chips. I heard that they have to sit for a year before I use them, otherwise they will suck the nitrogen out of the ground. I’m dying to use this free mulch but I am afraid. I am starting to think I have a brown thumb. Thanks a million for such useful content.
It's ideal if the woodchips have sat around for a bit, but as long as you don't dig them into the soil, then the nitrogen depleted zone is only about 1 millimeter deep into the soil level. So while it's technically accurate that there is some nitrogen tie-up, it's actually not really a big deal since the affected zone is so thin. Again, that's a big IF. IF you dig them into the soil, then you'll have issues with that area for about a year or so. This "myth" came about after Back to Eden gardening became popular and you had a bunch of traditional tiller gardeners try it out, they put woodchips on the soil then tilled them into the soil!!!! As far garlic pushing up through the mulch, yes it will push up through about 2-3 inches no problem. If you went 1 foot thick, I honestly think they'd still push up through that, but it's 50-50. It would be able to do it on their second year (if you forgot to pick them for example), but on the first year when they are still kind of weak? Maybe maybe not. So just go a bit thinner around where you sow the garlic, then as it grows up you can add more woodchips around it.
Not quite tropical, but check out Pete Kanaris. He does visit some tropical places like Paul Zink's place in Costa Rica. If you search for Paul Zink on Pete Kanaris channel (green dreams), you'll find some amazing videos. For subtropics check out Geoff Lawton, and Weedy Garden.
Fantastic! Thank you. I saw on one of your videos you had a pump on the end of the water hose. Any info on that? We have a creek and the garden is uphill from the creek. I haul water uphill with 5 gallon buckets. Its alot of work. Ive considered some type pully system. Then I saw you drop that thing in the pond, i said to myself I need that!! Got a link? 💙🌎✌
I decided to make another product of the week for the pump. Good idea. I have to link to the website, for some reason they don't like when the link comes from youtube. So here is my blog post on it - which has the product link there: permaculturelegacy.wixsite.com/website/post/product-of-the-weed-portable-submersible-pump Edit, if you could, reply and let me know you could see this comment. Sometimes youtube deletes comments with links to websites in them, even when it's me replying on my own channel!
How often are you watering your permaculture in a pot setup? Because that's very similar to what I have growing. I can only grow in containers right now
That one maybe every 3 days or so? Depends on the intensity of the sun in the day. It's also in a bit of a wind corridor between the house and the gazebo, so I think those winds try the top out a bit quicker than if I had them in another spot. It's funny though, of my entire food forest system, that pot probably gets 10x as much attention as the rest of it. It really shows you how regenerative a forest is. This pot I really have to monitor it to keep it healthy. The plants I plant in polycultures in soil, I can completely neglect them and they do fantastic. If I did that to the same plants, but in this pot, they'd all dry up and die.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thanks that helps! I don't get much wind so maybe I can go longer without watering. I look forward to the day I can plant in the ground!
Thank you very much for another inspiring video. I have started a foodforest in the South of France last year and your channel has been a great source of information. I have a subject that I would love your opinion on, and that might be an interesting video: "Invasive" plants. Many of the nitrogen fixers (autumn olive, Sea Buckthorn, Pseudoacacia, Silverberry, etc) tend to grow and spread vigorously. They are considered invasive by some people. On the other hand, they grow fast, fix nitrogen and have many benefits for a foodforest. What is your opinion on this?
I'm planning on doing a nitrogen fixing video, so I will definitely be talking about that there. I think invasive lists are important, but putting nitrogen fixers on them is stupid. They only are invasive because the soils are destroyed and they are trying to heal them.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Really looking forward to your nitrogen fixing video. A good example for me is autumn olive. I got really excited about it (nitrogen fixing, fruits, etc) but when I started studying it I came across this article (www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/indiana/stories-in-indiana/autumn-olive/). Internet is great, but sometimes it is hard to distinguish between all opinions :-)
Yes, and this is one area where people are VERY polarized. My line of thinking is more along the lines of Ben Falk. Ecosystems aren't static, they are constantly evolving. Removing nitrogen fixers because they are 'invasive' in poor soils is like cutting yourself and ripping the scab off that's trying to heal the wound.
Hey I have 6 inches of mulch I have clay soil and I have Bermuda crab grass growing I use this for muching and dropping , should I embrace this or mulch again
Yeah, honestly bermuda and crab grass are really "nasty" but it's really only because we don't like how they look. If you don't mind that, then it's just another plant making root exudates for the soil life. Chopping and dropping it is ideal. Plus, ANYTHING growing in clay is a good thing. Roots break it up, feed worms, who further break it up and help aerate it further, increasing drainage. I never really answered your question, because it's really up to you. You could go either way. If you don't mind it, then using it as a soil builder is a great idea.
This spring I sheet mulched with cardboard and compost, and sowed seeds in the compost. When can I add mulch? Seedlings are starting to come up and baking in the sun. Any recommendations for direct seeding?
You can mulch bow, just be careful. You could have mulched when you sowed the seed and just done it thinly. The plants can push up through some woodchips no problem. So next time just mulch after you sow, but do it lightly where you sowed. For now you have to be a bit careful not to break the fragile plants. You can also wait a bit longer until they are a little stronger and then mulch carefully.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thank you! I’ve learned a ton from your videos and I’m trying to apply what I can on my 1/8th of an acre urban lot in Minnesota. In the future I’d love to see videos about recommended fruit cultivars, how you process your harvests, and composting dog waste. It would also be cool to check back in on the locations where you definitely weren’t doing any guerrilla gardening.
Hahaha. Sure I can see what I can do. So little time, so many ideas! For the dog poop thing, I'm actually a little skittish of that, so I just toss it into the woods. I figure it'll turn to soil. I think for most manures, the correct answer is that time solves all things, so if you leave it long enough then it's safe. For the dog poop, I just chuck it into surrounding wild spaces and hope maybe deer smell it and are more cautious about pushing further.
Actually grasslands sequester carbon at the fastest rate if it’s maintained in the “teenage phase”. There’s no reason to have a monoculture lawn. Even if you only plant grasses there are varieties what have deeper tap roots than the typical lawn grass (alfalfa comes to mind). Clover is excellent to have interspersed and usually plays well with grass. Lawn daisies, plantain, self-heal all grow well in what little lawn I have left and provide shade for the soil. I do have to plant cold weather seeds as we don’t have a kill cycle here, for grasses anyway. The way you mow also affects the health of the soil. You can mow without a clippings-catching bag, mulching the lawn. You will get a more even coverage if you mow when the grasses aren’t actually wet. Mowing is actually a requirement for the health of a lawn. When you mow (or graze) a portion of the roots die back and soil organisms feed on the decaying matter, which gets pooped out, which feeds other organisms (including your lawn). So, polyculture, mulching, less frequent watering, deeper watering and mowing at the right time and frequency can help the earth.
Oh, forgot to say it’s absolutely okay to scatter a thinnish layer of finished compost over your lawn early in the season. May seem a little costly until you consider the cost of water, time spent maintaining your lawn, etc.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks. I took Jess’s (Roots & Refuge channel) seriously and turned my waiting room into a classroom. Dr. Elaine and Joel Salatin have been very illuminating, with very few instances of skepticism/disagreement. I’m old enough to be “doing things right”, or should I say ”doing things better”?
if you have a deep woodchip mulch won't you transition your soil to fungal heavy, but for annuals don't you want bacteria heavy? Do you add a lot of compost to it when planting annuals then?
Yes, I actually discussed that in the first part of the video but cut it out due to the sheer length this video was - and it was kind of getting side tracked... a video about water talking about ecological transition of soils. I have a habit to fly off on a tangent like that. I'm getting better at editing that stuff out, but then it's also good info. I'm glad you mention it though, and it's 100% correct. To balance the woodchip mulch, I amended this garden bed with horse manure which is extremely bacterial heavy. I did this as a thin top dressing 3-4 times just before a rain. Then as I planted all these plants, I added finished compost to the hole. I don't like doing that with trees and bushes (creating fertile holes surrounded by non-fertile soils - I'm kind of off on a tangent again...) but with annuals it's fine.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy so next year you’ll top dress with manure again before remulching and put compost in the holes again? Thanks for answering!
Yes, and even though this year, after say, the kale is done and removed, I will top dress some manure. Then after the zucchini are done and I sow more kale and winter rye, I will top dress with some manure. Not much, just a dusting.
I've earned in a video that you have got papaya Am I wrong? If it's not, how do you make them survive winter I immagine it's about microclimate and mulch
I have paw paws, which is Asinoma triloba. Some people call Papaya Paw paws (Carica papaya). Although I believe they share a common ancestor before the ice-age, they are different plants. Similar type of fruit though. The plant that North Americans call Paw Paw (Asinoma Triloba) is cold hardy down to zone 5. It's hard for me to grow them (zone 4), but so far so good, going on 5 years now - and we have had some harsh winters, -40C/F. Carica papaya however is hardy down to zone 9 only, and I could only grow those inside a 4-season greenhouse that is heated.
You almost had me until you said raspberries. You should've gone for a harder berry to propagate. Raspberry is so aggressive, it's a weed to most people.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy , Another thing you could never do is with that abundance of raspberries make jams and jellies and sell them as a sideline. Too bad it's a no no.
I've seen some but it's not bad here, yet at least. Maybe because I have so many birds, or maybe just dumb luck. I hear it's really bad out on the West side of Toronto. Guelph up to Barrie.
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I'm still trying to get my head around mulch. Do roots always grow deep enough to hit the soil, even when you have six inches of mulch? I'm guessing they can't get nutrients from the mulch itself. When you chop and drop, the plant gets added to the top of the mulch. How do the nutrients get down into the soil?
Yes, the woodchips aren't really bioavaiable nutrient. There's still carbon and nitrogen and oxygen and such, but it's all locked inside very thick cell walls of wood and locked up in things called lignins. Mushrooms break this apart and then make the nutrient available, but it takes time (years).
In the meantime, it's just a physical thing sitting there. That physical barrier shades the soils and acts as a shield against winds. A rock would do the same job - only the rock won't turn into soil (well that's kind of not true, but it takes so long that lets just say it's true).
As the woodchips break down, there are some things in the wood that bacteria can break down. It requires nitrogen to combine with the carbon in order to do this, so it takes the nitrogen from any that it can find in the soil. In this way, the woodchips right at the soil level will pull nitrogen out of the soil and deplete it. This area of effect is only about 1-2mm thick though, so nothing to worry about - as long as the woodchips remain on top of the soil and do not get tilled in. A woodchip here and there is fine, but a whole-sale tilling of woodchips into a garden bed is a bad idea. It will starve nitrogen out of the garden for about 3 years (after which actually it will be better than it was before).
Plant roots are pretty smart, and when they see nitrogen deficient mulch zone and nitrogen full soil just below it, they just chase the nutrients and go there. You may see some roots in the woodchips, but the plants are pretty smart and go where the nutrients are.
For chop and drop....
If you could wait a day and then grab that leaf and put it under a microscope you'd have half the answer. A few things happen. Rain drops splashing on your soils and woodchips and leaves will carry bacteria which exist on those down to the soil level. (The cut leaves also would be covered in bacteria before they were chopped). All this stuff eats the leaves microscopically, and as they do they live and die. Rainwater then flushes their bodies along with stuff like the humic acid they create down into the soils. Also...
At night when it's cooler you get the macro life coming in. Worms will actually come up from the ground and eat the leaves and then return back to the soil before the sun comes up and poop it back out.
I'm going to pin this - lots of good info here, thanks for the comment! This could be a future video.
You grow your plaNts in the soil NOT WOODCHIP LAYER! as you chop and drop the material breaks down into carbon and leaving behind its nutes . For the soil
Canadian permaculture put in more detail
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy regarding the chopping and dropping - you mentioned that worms come up to eat the leaves but doesn't it also encourage slugs? I'd like to chop and drop around my veggies but afraid of slugs and other pests.
I got about 2 feet of wood chips down to nothing in the space of about 2 months... I guess it depends of your soil biology...
It's always easier to let the plant grow deeper roots (with intervention from you) than intervene....
Mulch is a time bomb :) as all seeds are..... as the forest is,..... :)
For some weird reasons, I had to plant my toms and peppers *LOWER* than, you know,, ground level...
Lots of my plants did NOT survive :) but LOTS of them DID :)
So, you need to observe.....
These concepts are revolutionary and so dramatically changing the way I garden. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
No bare ground, don't disturb the soil - cut off weed photosynthesis (brilliant), chop and drop, plant densely (guilds), mulch more - water less. What a joy to wake up every morning to see how I might implement the things you're teaching us in my own yard and to pass on to others what I'm learning.
Most of us don't have the means to make a significant impact on the world for the better, but if we all do our part in creating even a little food forest, we really are changing our world and making it a better, more beautiful and sustainable place to live.
I don't know how you do it - working full time, raising a family, constantly improving your food forest, and I'm sure a myriad of other things behind the scenes that we don't see. You present a balanced life that is a joy to see as well. And some how with all you're doing - you manage to make these awesome educational videos - I can't thank you enough!
P.S. I'm editing my post after contemplating how you manage to do so much - I figured it out - your wife has to be a huge piece of the behind the scenes puzzle :-)
And for the record, I agree with her, some grass is lovely.
Absolutely, you definitely nailed it. My wife is a fantastic woman, she does a lot for sure. For the rest of it, the whole point of this kind of gardening is that it's a lot of work to set up, but then becomes self-sufficient in short order. For example, I film that main food forest strip all the time, but my interaction with that area is basically just to walk around and pick fruit. The food forest is therapy, it's not work. (Once it's up and planted out).
Right now, I'm handling all the side stuff like consultation, videos, etc, because Covid Lockdowns are keeping us working from home. No driving to work saves me 2 hours a day. Being able to take a quick 15 min break and answer comments. Taking my lunch outside and filming a video. Honestly though the no-driving to work thing is massive.
I'm going to be a bit sad when we all have to drive back into the office like slaves again. It's so wasteful and stupid. Speaking of which, back to work for me.
I have learned so much from you! I watch your videos almost daily; sometimes a few a day, sometimes I re-watch. So much to absorb. This is by far, my favorite channel on permaculture and food foresting. I've gotten outside now the last 6 months, my yard is starting to take on a new look. I had given up 20 years ago, after spending thousands of dollars on plants, watering constantly, and watching them die in the frost. Your channel and others has given me an understanding of how to take care of the soil, so it will take care of the plants. Thank you so much!
Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to BLAST positivity out there. You made my week!
There's so much knowledge and wisdom coming from here! This is exactly what the world needs.
Thanks Jay!
I live in Texas and recieve about 20 inches of annual precipitation. I have been converting my dry dirt yard to a food forest for three years now. I brought in quite a bit of wood chip mulch but in the past three years I have relied heavily on the naturally occurring fast growing weeds for ground cover and shade. It is a struggle to decide when to cut them down every year because I don't want to have to clear heavy brush forest 🤣 This isn't a question just information on how I am turning this dry landscape around. It is working and evolving different plants have come because of the increased organic matter and shade. This year it seems my own plantings established easier because of this. 👍 to you and your videos of your journey it has inspired me a lot!
Good work. And what you are doing now is actually by far the hardest part of the journey. Once that snowball starts rolling, it's almost impossible to stop the regrowth. The hardest part is definitely where you are right now.
I love using the weeds you have! I do this too. My garden this spring was incredibly dense with dandelions! They made excellent green manure for my fruit trees and bushes after they finished flowering.
I know this comment is two years old now, how is it going for you? I have the exact same dilemma, my garden looks like a weedy jungle as I basically stopped mowing several years ago because I think things growing is better than nothing growing, and I have noted various pioneers and even unexpected volunteers popping up and the idea is to gradually replace the "mess" with things I want growing, but it's taking time and it is hard sometimes to know what to do with the untidiness, neighbours think I'm crazy as does my family sometimes, lol.
@thehillsidegardener3961 As my trees have grown in the shade has been increasing and the weeds are changing. I think last year (The 5th Year) I let the weeds get out of hand with their happiness at the improved environment in general. Especially the soil with much more organic matter. The Food Forest is evolving beautifully if not in standard way. This year I will be mowing the weeds aggressively at the highest setting on my mower so as not to kill them but keep them protecting the soil but out of my way. I still may grow a few to use as shade or mulch but each year it has become less necessary with the maturity of the Food Forest.
Oh, since we needed a few buckets of silt to fill some garden trenches with to replace some of the heavy construction clay, we dug circles in the lawn in various spots, each one to fill a bucket with, and this breaks up the perfectly flat ground that sheets water away, so now there are some lower spots that will catch the water and sink it into the ground. Even in a completely flat area, one can guide water and collect it more efficiently~
That's great! There's an African technique of gardening called Xai or Zai, where they dig pits and dump twigs and manure into it. Sounds somewhat similar to what you are doing. One caution in doing that, you will depress the water table around you. You are basically digging dry-wells. That can often be a very good thing to do, but it does have some scenarios where you can dry out surrounding areas.
If you've ever dumped a bucket of dirt on the ground and spread it out so much that the dirt seems to disappear in the grass, then that's what i'm doing in reverse, filling a bucket with dirt from one spot, then forking the sides into the hole until it mostly goes away, hopefully with enough intact clumps of grass that it grows over and disappears. Besides, the low area of the garden is three feet below the height of the flat area around it, so the water table isn't going to be any more affected by two-foot circles an inch lower. All the clay from the sides of the sunken area is also planned to be used for various water projects, nothing goes to waste~
Yes, I did notice that my perennial permaculture style beds are never dry, but annual raised beds dry very fast.
Exactly. This is why so many gardening guides come with prescriptive watering like twice per day, this amount of water, in the morning and afternoon. It's because 90% of their water evaporates away. It's an extreme waste of water and there's no need for it. Just deep mulch the area, and when you water, you are watering the entire sponge of mulch, which then slowly releases the water over a week. The thick mulch prevents evaporation. The density of planting prevents heat at ground level, but also winds from wicking it all away.
This year, I have an arrangement with an old gardening lady from my fb group. I do her lawn work and I get a 10x10ish spot on the side of her garage to grow in. I put some 2" mini swales in and deep mulched. I can only get over there once a week, if that, and I have to haul buckets to water it. It's going to be a great experiment in STUN gardening.
For sure. I should also mention that even though these beds look like STUN (sheer total utter neglect - for anyone who didn't know what that stands for), they actually aren't. I'm out there looking at them and monitoring them - it just so happens they don't need any help from me. Well, I will probably water that one tomato patch if it doesn't rain today.
So it's not so much as we can completely neglect our annuals - they are annuals so they definitely need a little help, especially in the first 2-4 weeks. But it's more that if we do it right, we just simply don't need to intervene twice a day because 90% of our watering evaporated away.
STUN works best for perennial systems. Even Mark Shephard says he only "STUN"s his new systems after the first year is over and he does give them a little help at first. But these gardens just feel like STUN because they are so easy. The mulch helps, the plant density helps, the plant diversity helps, but all 3 together is like cheating.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy That's why I said it was an experiment. Plus I started from seed late so I'll be happy if I get any produce at all from it. I'm mostly concerned about biomass for building fertility since it was a grass to garden transition.
I don't know why but I like to think that mulch is a sponge that let go of the "old" water when "new" water arrives. My under mulch, even leaf mulch, is always humid and so the soil under it. Let just say I don't water my garden very often during the growing season!
The last three summers we had record drought/heat summers here in Germany. Month without rain, temperatures over 30°C. I not once watered my lawn. It stayes green while that of all my neighbours turned "Mars", as you said :D I just stopped mowing. The grass was not growing, but it stayed alive and green. Had to water a few newly planted trees, shrubs and perennials, though.
Another great video.
Biological activity in the soil greatly reduces the need water. Building soil structure on lawns by adding sifted compost and composted manure is a good way to do this . I grow more beans that we could use to save seed to use as a cover crop if a bed is harvested and nothing is planted to continue to feed the soil . This also gives me more material for compost and fixes nitrogen back. But usually I am planting something after something is harvested( usually something that matures quickly and cool weather tolerant like radishes or lettuce).
I can’t agree with you more about getting rid of my front yard lawn and turning it into a food forest just like my backyard. I am still having this conversation with my wife, a pretty tough situation to win especially living in a subdivision with an HOA.
Yes, you have a whole extra battle to fight. A good way to go about dealing with an HoA is to use mimicry. Mimic the looks of your neighbours landscaping and just replace useless stuff with edible stuff. The goal is to not stand out - at least not in an extreme way. Stuff like Collard greens can be really ornamental. Jerusalem artichokes are very pretty. Etc.
Of course that's a lot harder when everyone ONLY had sod grass.
Consider red orach. It is used a lot as a bouquet filler, but it's edible and delicious. Red amaranth is also spectacular and edible. Quinoa as well.
Thank you so much for being a constant source of information! There is so much knowledge I've gained from your channel that I utilize every time I go out into my garden. I wouldn't be half the permaculturist I am now if I never found your videos.
I'm so glad to help! This is exactly why I spend my free time doing this - getting people up and going faster. Thanks for letting me know you've found useful info in my videos :)
16:30 WOW! Why did I never think of this? This is one of those AH-HA! moments that make your channel so good. Why did I never think of this? This is such a good point. The entire video was worth it even just for that one single point. How many people only water their plants?
Thanks. Obviously this also comes with a disclaimer that we should be really careful how much water we use in dry climates. This makes the deep mulch, plant density and especially plant/variety selection aspects absolutely critical.
You make so many good points. Thank you. Dr. Elaine Ingram is such a great source for soil science and I have been diving into all that information lately. It’s fascinating and makes so much sense once you start learning about it all.
Thanks for sharing!
Excellent.
Love how you show the examples right there when your talking. Gives a good visual and better understanding.
Thanks Pat :)
My area has had a very dry spring so far and all of these points are great. I am going to go out and mulch my poor Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes. I didn't want to suppress them when sprouting, but they are having a rough time with water retention right now.
This was a really good comprehensive guide! This is why I love this channel, you really get into it. So much valuable information in here. I also like how you show areas that are doing poorly and not just areas that are doing well and pretending you are some gardening God like other gardeners do. We can learn so much in our failed areas, and I come here to learn, not to see some fake life where all the bad stuff is hidden. It is actually empowering, because there's no way I'm going to do as much as you do. So it lets me know I can also succeed.
Im still working on getting a mixed annual/perennial bed that I am happy with. This year the clover and lettuce have made friends, and I have decided to leave it that way. I will see what happens. Nature also provided me with a settler's footprint (plantain) that I will chop and drop and a dandelion to eat.
We got about 1" of rain between two thunderstorms over the last two weekends. I'm thrilled as I probably don't need to go out and water the majority of the yard for at least a week or two (maybe a month if we get another good thunderstorm). I'll still go water the veggies maybe once this week as they're still fairly young, but that's a huge load off as I mostly handwater the plants that I'm establishing. 1" was enough to fill up our largest rain barrels (at 200 gallons each) and all that rainwater is pretty easy to use for deep watering between summer thunderstorms. I really wish I had more storage though, the plants really love rainwater.
Totally agree that you have to observe the plants. I don't usually pull back the mulch, but mostly look at the growth points for 'taco' leaf shapes. Usually a couple inches of mulch will hold water for weeks around here. I'll plant most of my xeric plants differently as they don't appreciate as much moisture (some do, but a lot of the pioneer species need lean / dry soil). Thanks for the reminder that I need to go finish mulching our raised beds now that most of the seeds have sprouted. :)
Another great informative video!
Thanks again!
I've watched (and loved!) most of your videos and I'm trying to figure out what to do in my situation. I live in a dry climate that gets only 11 inches of rain per year (Idaho, USDA zone 5, 5000' elevation). I'm guessing that deep mulch and swales alone won't cut it, I will need to water almost everything long term, even if only irregularly. Do you have to water everything, or is your precipitation in Ontario sufficient to remove that chore? How do you water, other than precipitation? Drip system? Pulling a hose around acres of property? Sprinklers? I'm preparing to convert my new 1-acre property from all grass and sprinklers (groan) to a food forest and I'm not sure if/how I should transition away from the current in-ground sprinkler system, and whether I should plan on watering by hand, sprinklers, or drip system. Doing it wrong will cost tons of labor later, so I'd like to get it right. Also, if you can recommend any permaculture or back-to-eden resources that focus on dry or high-desert climates that would be very helpful. Thank you for your videos, they are FANTASTIC!
I’d love to know HOW to water as well. Just getting started but I have no idea if I do drip or sprinkler or what. Help. Loving all your videos. ❤
It's going to be a major drought year, so it's good to spread every water efficiency and set up such things for the gardens as quickly as possible, as infrastructure does nothing until it's implemented, but after it is, it's working on the area it's set up in. Last fall we had a dozen weeks of no rain, and in areas where the trees shaded the ground, the lawn was very noticeably greener and longer, even different types of plants start growing in those areas, we have cinquefoil and indica in those places, so we can potentially grow strawberries in those places and they would do well there.
In that dozen weeks in the fall of no rain, I prolly should have watered my strawberry patch a little, but it turned out fine and the plants look amazing now, even though only twenty or so plants have flowered out of a few hundred, and the variety that germinated was from super sour strawberries, and the ones from the patch have varying amounts of sour, but it's okay as it's still genetic diversity, and we found some super sweet strawberries that we're starting from seed now, so over time each strawberry will taste both sweet and sour, making it perfect to use in cooking~
Good stuff! A little dappled shade goes a long way.
Awesome Video! Thank You!
You're welcome!
Good for you for still wearing your Leafs hat! Tough loss. Tough series. Just when you think we have a chance ...
I will wear it to my grave. It's by far the most abusive relationship I've ever been in.
Just getting started on my permaculture food forest so this is new for me. I already have several fruit trees planted in a lawn and everything is very flat. Not sure how I get thick enough mulch around my trees without killing them in order to keep things moist but my main question is, do you water with over head sprinklers so everything gets wet in your guild or drip or what? How do you get everything watered. Thanks and loving your videos. ❤
Thanks 😊
I don't really water to be honest, we get decent rain. I think I watered once this year and once last year when it didn't rain for 2 months, but thats pretty abnormal for us here. The thick mulch also helps a ton, because it stores just so much water. The dense guild plantings also help a ton to reduce wind loss via evaporation, and keep the soil shaded also.
For the mulch, you can go thick without smothering plants too badly, as long as it stays moist it will break down really quickly. 6 inches of mulch will turn into 1 inch in a year or so.
The most important thing with watering is just dense planting and soil shading (from dense planting). If you are in a dry climate, use appropriate plants, so that overall water needs are low. Once established, you really shouldn't ever need to water. Whatever natural spaces you have around you survive, and that's how they do it - dense planting and shade.
Obviously the first few years, you won't have that developed yet, and you may need a little watering here and there. But that's all the more reason to go with thick mulch that will hold and store that water better.
When I water I just water from the top. I try to minimize splashing. For example, I will try to use plant leaves and stems to help bring the water down to the soil with lower energy (i.e. kinetic energy of the water absorbed by the leaves of plants like comfrey and rhubarb, which minimizes splashing on the ground, and thus spreading fungal diseases to plants).
In the annual gardens, I tend to water those more often (annuals after all), and there I really try to water from below when possible
another great video. i should have kept count of the number of times you mention that you want the lawn to go!!
I know my wife is! lol And I'm way past my allotment # of mentions of that topic. All jokes aside, she reigns me in, which is actually needed. I have a habitual nature of getting consumed by the things I get interested in.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I can tell that about you and appreciate it. I'm the same. Keep the seasons going, i'll be watching to see if a new guild forms over the grass at some point! I expect it might happen, one day....
wood chip piles form a nice cooler microclimate next to them. I make big berms next to plants that don't like the heat so much, like my currants and cane fruit. It really helps in the crazy 90 degree May days we've had here in New England
Good tip! I do find that a fresh pile of chips can actually get really hot though, so I think it depends on the size of and age of the pile. I've put a large pile of fresh chips next to certain plants in the spring just to cheat some heat into the soil around them.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy ah, yes I should have specified that these are cold piles, having sat around for at least a year. They never get hot, but are full of lovely coprinellus mycelium which keeps moisture moving through the pile and breaking them down slowly into wonderful soil.
Good morning Canadian Permaculture!
HAHAHAHA Nice Jenniffer! I loved that part of your video. Good morning right back to you. :)
Great video! Just tonight, it seems that I talked my hubby into being okay with the rest of the lawn being turned into a food forest, lol. We always sit under the apple tree when relaxing so why not have more of that 🤔 It worked! I’m so excited to plant more trees.
Can you inform as to how the nutrients go from the leaves chopped and dropped on top of the wood chips down through the layer and into the soil?
I have been confused about this for awhile now. I usually pull back my chips and place the leaves directly on the soil because I just can’t understand how this works. I saw that Kevin Farnworth also asked this question on this video. Thanks!
If you could wait a day and then grab that leaf and put it under a microscope you'd have half the answer. A few things happen. Rain drops splashing on your soils and woodchips and leaves will carry bacteria which exist on those down to the soil level. (The cut leaves also would be covered in bacteria before they were chopped). All this stuff eats the leaves microscopically, and as they do they live and die. Rainwater then flushes their bodies along with stuff like the humic acid they create down into the soils. Also...
At night when it's cooler you get the macro life coming in. Worms will actually come up from the ground and eat the leaves and then return back to the soil before the sun comes up and poop it back out.
Hi, Keith!
I've watched some of your videos and I have to say they are really inspiring as well as comprehensive which is very important for me as there is very few information on the permaculture theme in my native language so far. So thank you for sharing!
I have some questions and I would appreciate so much if you could find some time to help me figure it out:
1. As for the planting density, I get the idea, but I wonder if it could be a somewhat bad thing when it comes to harvesting? Let's say, you have to step on some of your strawberry plants to get to those which are harder to reach. Or how you collect your peaches without disturbing or even hurting the plants groing in your peach guild? Thank you.
2. I wonder if there is a video showing the best permacultural way of planting seedlings. In different sources in my native language I find controversial opinions, like "Dig a hole 1 meter deep, put there some stones and sand for drenage, then fill it with the rich loose soil or compost, plant the seedling and water it with 5 to 10 buckets of water " and then "What you need is to minimise the disturbance of your soil - dig the pit just as big as your seedling's root systems size (i.e. the actual pot size), put out the seedling from the pot, place it into the pit add a bit soil to fill the voids and water it a bit - that's it". Those got me so confused... I have bought a small virgin land plot of only 0,25 acre :) But I still hope I can do my best to follow permacultural essentials while creating a tiny food forest there... It's just not than easy to be sure which way is truely about permaculture.. :) So I would appreciate if you could spare some time to help me understand :) Thank you so much in advance!
P.S. I really hope I got your name correct - I found it out from my local youtube permaculture channel where I first saw a video about your foodforest and then I've followed your channel and somehow I didn't find your name anywhere there, so I'm sorry if I got it wrong :)
You found my guild guide after and left a comment saying I answered many of these in that video. Just to elaborate and help out more...
For 1), there is always going to be a trade off between planting density and ease of harvest. Find your balance and choose what you prefer.
For me, I actually want plant density. That means some fruit is annoying to harvest. I want to maximize the energy and food in my ecosystem, and the resiliency of my forest as a whole. I value the entire forest strength as a priority above any single element in it. However if I instead prioritized a single peach tree, I would plant less densely And in fact, I do have a couple peaches where I intentionally plant less densely around them, because I do want to ensure some ease of harvest and ensure the peach dominates that area, so I get some of my favorite food guaranteed.
In other areas I plant much more densely, understanding that each individual plant yield may decrease, but my overall system yield will increase. Especially the wildlife.
Having some super dense areas like this can ensure you have a robust insect biome to protect and pollinate all your other plants. I feel it is super important to have sections of a food forest like this. Almost completely donated to nature.
I will add a link for 2) question
th-cam.com/video/w5CWUUVnQ-U/w-d-xo.html
that's for question 2
Just on 14:30, I'm assuming you mean to run a system like Charles Dowding, using compost as the mulch layer, and not putting a compost layer on top of the woodchip layer? That would be burying the woodchips, which I know you are against due to Nitrogen tie-up?
Oh yes good catch, 100%. Definitely don't put a 3 inch thick compost layer on top of woodchips and then grow in that for a season. In that specific example, you could just pull woodchips back from an area, put compost down , and then and then put the woodchips back on top, or even just use the comfrey chop and drop as the mulch, if it were done regularly and nice and thick. Carbon heavy mulches like woodchips stay on top of the soil - unless you are deliberately making a hugelkulture bed with it and are okay with "killing your bed" for a few years as it develops slowly. Those beds will eventually be incredible, they just take some time to break down and end the nitrogen tie-up. Great point, thanks for making it.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I took this as a thin layer of compost being slowly watered in. That may have been just my container perspective. Thanks for clearing it up.
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Hi! Excellent video. The recent frost here in Northbrook Ontario killed a lot of my tomatoes and some peppers. I am in the process of replacing som of the tomatoes with some extra plants that I just happened to have, and I am still not done planting. I want to put some garlic randomly in with the tomatoes as a companion. If I mulch just after I put them in, will the garlic be able to find it’s way past the mulch? I have a ton of fresh wood chips. I heard that they have to sit for a year before I use them, otherwise they will suck the nitrogen out of the ground. I’m dying to use this free mulch but I am afraid. I am starting to think I have a brown thumb. Thanks a million for such useful content.
It's ideal if the woodchips have sat around for a bit, but as long as you don't dig them into the soil, then the nitrogen depleted zone is only about 1 millimeter deep into the soil level. So while it's technically accurate that there is some nitrogen tie-up, it's actually not really a big deal since the affected zone is so thin. Again, that's a big IF. IF you dig them into the soil, then you'll have issues with that area for about a year or so. This "myth" came about after Back to Eden gardening became popular and you had a bunch of traditional tiller gardeners try it out, they put woodchips on the soil then tilled them into the soil!!!!
As far garlic pushing up through the mulch, yes it will push up through about 2-3 inches no problem. If you went 1 foot thick, I honestly think they'd still push up through that, but it's 50-50. It would be able to do it on their second year (if you forgot to pick them for example), but on the first year when they are still kind of weak? Maybe maybe not. So just go a bit thinner around where you sow the garlic, then as it grows up you can add more woodchips around it.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy oh perfect! Thank you so much!
I watched almost all of your videos. Could you recommend another geek who practice their permaculture in tropical climates?
Not quite tropical, but check out Pete Kanaris. He does visit some tropical places like Paul Zink's place in Costa Rica. If you search for Paul Zink on Pete Kanaris channel (green dreams), you'll find some amazing videos.
For subtropics check out Geoff Lawton, and Weedy Garden.
Fantastic! Thank you. I saw on one of your videos you had a pump on the end of the water hose. Any info on that? We have a creek and the garden is uphill from the creek. I haul water uphill with 5 gallon buckets. Its alot of work. Ive considered some type pully system. Then I saw you drop that thing in the pond, i said to myself I need that!! Got a link? 💙🌎✌
I decided to make another product of the week for the pump. Good idea. I have to link to the website, for some reason they don't like when the link comes from youtube. So here is my blog post on it - which has the product link there: permaculturelegacy.wixsite.com/website/post/product-of-the-weed-portable-submersible-pump
Edit, if you could, reply and let me know you could see this comment. Sometimes youtube deletes comments with links to websites in them, even when it's me replying on my own channel!
Link worked!! Fantastic. Im headed there to get one now! Thank you so much!🌎✌
How often are you watering your permaculture in a pot setup? Because that's very similar to what I have growing. I can only grow in containers right now
That one maybe every 3 days or so? Depends on the intensity of the sun in the day. It's also in a bit of a wind corridor between the house and the gazebo, so I think those winds try the top out a bit quicker than if I had them in another spot. It's funny though, of my entire food forest system, that pot probably gets 10x as much attention as the rest of it. It really shows you how regenerative a forest is. This pot I really have to monitor it to keep it healthy. The plants I plant in polycultures in soil, I can completely neglect them and they do fantastic. If I did that to the same plants, but in this pot, they'd all dry up and die.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thanks that helps! I don't get much wind so maybe I can go longer without watering. I look forward to the day I can plant in the ground!
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Thank you very much for another inspiring video. I have started a foodforest in the South of France last year and your channel has been a great source of information. I have a subject that I would love your opinion on, and that might be an interesting video: "Invasive" plants. Many of the nitrogen fixers (autumn olive, Sea Buckthorn, Pseudoacacia, Silverberry, etc) tend to grow and spread vigorously. They are considered invasive by some people. On the other hand, they grow fast, fix nitrogen and have many benefits for a foodforest. What is your opinion on this?
I'm planning on doing a nitrogen fixing video, so I will definitely be talking about that there. I think invasive lists are important, but putting nitrogen fixers on them is stupid. They only are invasive because the soils are destroyed and they are trying to heal them.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Really looking forward to your nitrogen fixing video. A good example for me is autumn olive. I got really excited about it (nitrogen fixing, fruits, etc) but when I started studying it I came across this article (www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/indiana/stories-in-indiana/autumn-olive/). Internet is great, but sometimes it is hard to distinguish between all opinions :-)
Yes, and this is one area where people are VERY polarized. My line of thinking is more along the lines of Ben Falk. Ecosystems aren't static, they are constantly evolving. Removing nitrogen fixers because they are 'invasive' in poor soils is like cutting yourself and ripping the scab off that's trying to heal the wound.
Hey I have 6 inches of mulch I have clay soil and I have Bermuda crab grass growing I use this for muching and dropping , should I embrace this or mulch again
Yeah, honestly bermuda and crab grass are really "nasty" but it's really only because we don't like how they look. If you don't mind that, then it's just another plant making root exudates for the soil life. Chopping and dropping it is ideal. Plus, ANYTHING growing in clay is a good thing. Roots break it up, feed worms, who further break it up and help aerate it further, increasing drainage.
I never really answered your question, because it's really up to you. You could go either way. If you don't mind it, then using it as a soil builder is a great idea.
By your response you perfectly answered my question! Thank you ! I'm gonna embrace it ! Thank you !!!! Love ohana
This spring I sheet mulched with cardboard and compost, and sowed seeds in the compost. When can I add mulch? Seedlings are starting to come up and baking in the sun. Any recommendations for direct seeding?
You can mulch bow, just be careful. You could have mulched when you sowed the seed and just done it thinly. The plants can push up through some woodchips no problem. So next time just mulch after you sow, but do it lightly where you sowed.
For now you have to be a bit careful not to break the fragile plants. You can also wait a bit longer until they are a little stronger and then mulch carefully.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thank you! I’ve learned a ton from your videos and I’m trying to apply what I can on my 1/8th of an acre urban lot in Minnesota. In the future I’d love to see videos about recommended fruit cultivars, how you process your harvests, and composting dog waste. It would also be cool to check back in on the locations where you definitely weren’t doing any guerrilla gardening.
Hahaha. Sure I can see what I can do. So little time, so many ideas! For the dog poop thing, I'm actually a little skittish of that, so I just toss it into the woods. I figure it'll turn to soil. I think for most manures, the correct answer is that time solves all things, so if you leave it long enough then it's safe. For the dog poop, I just chuck it into surrounding wild spaces and hope maybe deer smell it and are more cautious about pushing further.
Actually grasslands sequester carbon at the fastest rate if it’s maintained in the “teenage phase”. There’s no reason to have a monoculture lawn. Even if you only plant grasses there are varieties what have deeper tap roots than the typical lawn grass (alfalfa comes to mind). Clover is excellent to have interspersed and usually plays well with grass. Lawn daisies, plantain, self-heal all grow well in what little lawn I have left and provide shade for the soil. I do have to plant cold weather seeds as we don’t have a kill cycle here, for grasses anyway. The way you mow also affects the health of the soil. You can mow without a clippings-catching bag, mulching the lawn. You will get a more even coverage if you mow when the grasses aren’t actually wet. Mowing is actually a requirement for the health of a lawn. When you mow (or graze) a portion of the roots die back and soil organisms feed on the decaying matter, which gets pooped out, which feeds other organisms (including your lawn). So, polyculture, mulching, less frequent watering, deeper watering and mowing at the right time and frequency can help the earth.
Oh, forgot to say it’s absolutely okay to scatter a thinnish layer of finished compost over your lawn early in the season. May seem a little costly until you consider the cost of water, time spent maintaining your lawn, etc.
This comment is just bang on in every regard. Thanks Laura, you know your stuff!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks. I took Jess’s (Roots & Refuge channel) seriously and turned my waiting room into a classroom. Dr. Elaine and Joel Salatin have been very illuminating, with very few instances of skepticism/disagreement. I’m old enough to be “doing things right”, or should I say ”doing things better”?
if you have a deep woodchip mulch won't you transition your soil to fungal heavy, but for annuals don't you want bacteria heavy? Do you add a lot of compost to it when planting annuals then?
Yes, I actually discussed that in the first part of the video but cut it out due to the sheer length this video was - and it was kind of getting side tracked... a video about water talking about ecological transition of soils. I have a habit to fly off on a tangent like that. I'm getting better at editing that stuff out, but then it's also good info. I'm glad you mention it though, and it's 100% correct. To balance the woodchip mulch, I amended this garden bed with horse manure which is extremely bacterial heavy. I did this as a thin top dressing 3-4 times just before a rain. Then as I planted all these plants, I added finished compost to the hole. I don't like doing that with trees and bushes (creating fertile holes surrounded by non-fertile soils - I'm kind of off on a tangent again...) but with annuals it's fine.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy so next year you’ll top dress with manure again before remulching and put compost in the holes again?
Thanks for answering!
Yes, and even though this year, after say, the kale is done and removed, I will top dress some manure. Then after the zucchini are done and I sow more kale and winter rye, I will top dress with some manure. Not much, just a dusting.
I've earned in a video that you have got papaya
Am I wrong? If it's not, how do you make them survive winter
I immagine it's about microclimate and mulch
I have paw paws, which is Asinoma triloba. Some people call Papaya Paw paws (Carica papaya). Although I believe they share a common ancestor before the ice-age, they are different plants. Similar type of fruit though.
The plant that North Americans call Paw Paw (Asinoma Triloba) is cold hardy down to zone 5. It's hard for me to grow them (zone 4), but so far so good, going on 5 years now - and we have had some harsh winters, -40C/F. Carica papaya however is hardy down to zone 9 only, and I could only grow those inside a 4-season greenhouse that is heated.
this permaculture stuff is all a front, we all know youre a kingpin in the raspberry black market!
You almost had me until you said raspberries. You should've gone for a harder berry to propagate. Raspberry is so aggressive, it's a weed to most people.
I would never sell anything in Cash or Crypto because then you cannot track it for tax purposes. That would not be something I would ever do. Nope.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy , Another thing you could never do is with that abundance of raspberries make jams and jellies and sell them as a sideline. Too bad it's a no no.
Lol
@@PaleGhost69 and interestingly enough, I am having so much trouble keeping my raspberry plants alive😔.
Great work man! How is your gypsy moth invasion? I assume you’ve been seeing and dealing with them.
I've seen some but it's not bad here, yet at least. Maybe because I have so many birds, or maybe just dumb luck. I hear it's really bad out on the West side of Toronto. Guelph up to Barrie.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy they’re brutal this way as well. 20 min north of Belleville. Pretty much made my oaks look like Swiss cheese.