Yes! Here in OH I have heavy clay soil. I use a pitch fork to loosen, add compost in the fall and spring, and plant carrots “randomly” to loosen really dense areas.
I like to reuse the weeds I pull out as a "weed mulch" and put them back on the soil. I don't understand people who throw weeds away in yard waste bags because they're removing biomass from the system, which is usually then replaced with purchased compost or fertilizer (or sometimes not at all). The main reason I weed is because our neighbors would complain otherwise. It would be nice to get rid of bylaws forcing you to cut the lawn and get rid of "unsightly weeds" as it's just classist bullshit. Lawns are so dumb, I am slowly working on getting rid of mine.
Is there are weeds that I don’t want and they have not gone to seed absolutely use them as mulch when I pull them up. Even if they have gone to seed a clip off the top and throw the rest back on the bed. That way the weed can contribute to the fertility of my garden even if it is no longer living there
My parents and grandparents never tilled at all. They did grow Comfrey to make a nasty smelling stew to fertilize their gardens and transplant Butterfly Weed into the veg garden to attract pollinators. This was 60 years ago.
At home, i 'read my weeds' to see what they are telling me, and then i find the more-useful-to-me version. I am remediating a given area of soil, and I put in comfrey, borage, yarrow, and nasturtium. I can chop and drop them all, the roots are doing different things that i need them to do, and they make a good cover crop and basically choke out everything else. I can use them for different purposes around the garden, too, where I am working actively -- so there's multi-uses for me. And, they do look pretty spring-through-autumn here, so it's a good option.
Thank you for this important information! I started gardening mostly ornamentals 10 years ago. I knew nothing but I refused to use any pesticides, fungicides, herbicides or even fertilizer. I thought I would have issues because this is what we're led to believe, but I have zero pests problems. My plants are healthy, and my soil has become better every year because I do leave the leaves on the beds over winter and make sure to remove the wet matted leaves in the spring. In 2020 I started veggie gardening mostly in containers, I reuse potting soil so I do mix organic fertilizer in the old potting soil, knowing the plant will use if needed unlike being forced to uptake it when conventional fertilizer is used. I especially love summer squashes, I seen one squash bug, one leaf with eggs from the squash bug and aphids on my milkweed. I removed the leaf and disposed of the bug. Besides that I let nature take care of the rest. Nature does take care of it. I would spend hours at a time removing weeds only for a whole new crop to appear the next day. So I use creeping thyme as ground cover for years and this year I planted a necterine tree ,I'm not spraying it I under planted this tiny tree with calendula and oregano to ward off pests and weeds. I will also be adding roman chamomile as a ground cover soon. Over the years the variety of butterflies, birds, bees, and other insects has been amazing, I lived in a highly congested urban area. When I started gardening it was about making my property beautiful and tidy but now it's about all the living creatures that visit. I do have small patch of grass in my back that is full of weeds. I started adding clover to it, mainly to fix nitrogen and to over take the weeds. I think it's beautiful and the bees love it!
Great overview - I've been gardening this more bio-friendly way for decades 🍃 My 11 year old grandson is helping me build a garden at their house, and it's fun to give him nuggets of why we do what we do 💚
I think it's easy to feel like young permaculture systems are failures because they're not as ostensibly productive as either mature systems or those that are rigorously tended with artificial inputs. It's easy to see someone else's thriving garden and feel like you should just bite the bullet and use fertilizer/pesticide to see more immediate return on investment. I would love to see a video on the struggles you encountered early on and how to exercise patience with low initial yields.
I am very new to permaculture (and in a sense, gardening), and the thing that has helped me is to focus on the overall system care and individual plant care. I discovered that this is a practice of joy. The joy of being in the garden, the joy of learning, and the joy of seeing and building on small successes. For many things that are a struggle, such as aphids, i look at system elements like attracting predators and using companions to prevent aphids from 'finding' those plants which will take time to see if they work and develop, and in the mean time, will use neem and seaweed feed to prevent deep damage to the plants the aphids are affecting. Over time, I think we'll find balance in the garden, but in the mean time, i'm learning and enjoying a lot. :)
I planted a bing cherry in… 2020 maybe? Or early 2021. This year I got a beautiful crop of about a dozen fat cherries. I’ve been eating a few every other day as a snack when I walk my dog. I have a Rainier cherry I planted this year. No flowers. It’s just settling in. But I’m just enjoying having yet another tree in my yard. Plant things you enjoy and can look forward to I think. That’s what helped me. Also useful flowers are SO HELPFUL. I pull up every day after work and I have a mass of annual and biennial flowers twinkling at me and making me just happy to be at home. It’s so nice. If you are waiting for something to fruit, put something pretty nearby. Or useful. Or fun. Or some combination of the above. It adds a little happy bump yo your gardening so that you can enjoy something even while you wait.
I was so surprised this year when I started some vegetables in my new raised bed how with out using pesticides but simply growing the vegetables at the right time there's a huge diversity of insects in just the raised bed but I haven't had any sort of imbalance when it comes to pests and I definitely think it's because there's so many types of insects present to maintain that balance. The only intervention I do is picking off the eggs of the squash vine borers from my zucchini plant but other than that it manages itself for the most part.
I will definitely use some organic pest/fungicides when pest and disease pressure becomes too threatening. Organic pest control can be as simple as handpicking caterpillars, there's nothing wrong with trying to tip the balance in your favor as long as you don't go crazy and nuke everything.
@@clobberelladoesntreadcomme9920 that's definitely true. For me I try to just ease into it with the organic pesticides as necessary but I try to do all the preventative stuff first.
Thank you for your video. I’m an organic gardener and I have noticed on three different occasions where I decided to use synthetic fertilizers after growing the plants organically and all three plants died exactly how you explained in the video. When you use the synthetic fertilizer the plant puts on this vigorous growth so you think wow! The plant is doing awesome and then it gets attacked by insects and the plants has no defence and dies. I will always grow organically it’s better for the environment and humans.
I just found you today but have already watched a dozen videos. They've all been great. I'm only half way through this one and I think it's the best yet. Thank you so much, gonna share it : )
Thank you for another great video! Since I started gardening, I have struggled with the weeds myth. Every time I weeded I wondered if it was really the right thing to do. This year finally I got confirmation that having "weeds" around mature plants is a positive thing as I noticed that the compost in the areas that had more weeds was a lot more moist than in the areas I had cleared around the vegetables. This busted for me the myth that the weeds were competing for water as they were clearly in fact helping keep that water in the soil. I now, rather than pull the weeds that happen to grow, trim them and drop the clippings in the beds. Of course my veg beds look messy, but I water less often and my veggies grow happily in their weedy forest.
As a child, my dad used to till for a tiny garden of a few tomatoes and green beans. It seemed such a brutal way to garden, that I have spent all my years gardening exploring how to avoid using such methods.
Love your perspective. I grew up learning about the natural world from my dad, who was a forester. The way natural systems work just make so much more sense than the methods used in industrial agriculture. Discovering no-till, no-dig gardening was a lightbulb moment that made so much feel possible for me.
Haha, I got into permaculture via foraging rather than gardening - I’d never gardened before, but I’m an avid forager. I don’t weed the weeds, I eat ‘em! Actually, I’m rather looking forward to finding some in my garden, as I’m trying to overcome a rhizomatous zoysia grass lawn (shudder).
Understanding your micro climate is important to success. Even though we're in zone 8, summers are more like zone 9 or 10, with temps easily over 90 degrees. I started reading a realized that a lot of our 'classic' veggies, struggle in those temperatures no matter how much you water no matter how much you fertilize, everything is going to struggle in summer here. Looking at how much sun/shade you get is a key to success and planting what can thrive there, not what everyone else has. Our garden has only 7 hours of sunlight at any given time, but during the day, it is easy to assume that the garden is getting all kinds of direct, harsh, sun. The reality is, yes it is getting direct harsh middle of the day sun, but it is shaded most of the day. So that limits what we can grow. Then, we are on a clay hardpan that used to be a cow pasture....there is literally an old creek bed that runs through the property. If you till this, you will get thousands of noxious weeds that have been buried since the 80's. Plus, in creek beds, the clay runs deep, deep, deep. Borage is a fantastic clay busting mineral mining plant that moves from place to place. It could be considered "weedy" but it really moves itself to a new patch once it's work is done. We have to accept that our yard works in a different way than others and sometimes, seeds that I plant, won't germinate until the NEXT YEAR. Which could be frustrating if we were tilling every year. But they do come up, on their own timeline....which is so much better!
It’s all opposite of how I was taught growing up in Appalachia. It’s taken years for me to convince my family that we should try other methods of gardening. During the winter I called up local tree services, and power companies and gathered up all the mulch I could find. I made a few mulch beds and got started. We’ve had some record heat here this spring into summer, and it has been quite dry for us at times. I think I may have made them believers of the no till method. Just the water retention alone is a miracle, not to mention all the other benefits. I’ve also somewhat unintentionally allowed swaths of weeds to grow in between the beds, and although some may consider it unsightly, it has been such a blessing. I had heard of trap planting before and wanted to try it, and I had intentions of actually planting some trap gardens, but I wound up not having the time and resources, not that it mattered, because the weeds did it for me. I’ve watched as swarms of Japanese beetles flock to the tall weeds growing in between my beds, and throughout the field surrounding it. Not one of my plants has been damaged by insects so far. I think my family is beginning to see the benefits of allowing nature to take the lead. I have so much to learn still, and I’ve made so many mistakes this year. So many things didn’t get finished, and I’ve slacked off a lot over the last month, but it happens. The tomatoes are still loaded down. Things are still growing, and flourishing. I’m excited to see the progress moving forward in the coming years, and I’m grateful for the milestones I’ve reached now. Thank you for your channel and all of the wonderful content you create, this is one of my favorite channels!
Do you have any suggestions for groundhogs? This is my first year planting with these principals and I decided to put up a wire fence to protect my plants. I did realize it is going to prevent other beneficial species from entering the area, like frogs to eat my slugs.
I’ve made my garden beds and feed my garden with weeds, compost tea made of weeds, mulched with weeds and other homemade yard waste compost. I’ve never bought anything for my food forest but seeds and very few plants. Yes it takes a long time but everything builds up over time, definitely not an insta-garden. 😂 I practice everything you mentioned in this video and it works. Work with nature for balance.
Bingo! :) Which leads me to a question I have for you and a couple of comments of my own. First the question :) I enjoy putting some ornamentals about (as do you) to promote that "wow factor" both for myself and my neighborhood. Makes for nice relationships :) Given that I've been paying particular attention when you mention or pass by your rosses. Every year I struggle with rust on some of mine. This year especially bad and to the point that I'm considering getting rid of those particular ones and replacing with a new variety (but that teaches me nothing). I have not seen much rust on yours .... just a little here and there. Do you just not have that problem? If you do what have you done to minimalize it. Now first! The standard suggestions I've already done for many years: cut out and dispose of diseased portions, prune to allow air and sun, spray with different concoctions of organic oils/backing soda etc. So what is your take? Now on weeds :) I plant Dutch White Clover on purpose :) Here in Boise sunflowers grow VERY well and seed themselves but I put in other types and colors to enhance that. I also have a great deal of Showy Milkweed that I introduced and it took off. These are my favorites. I mention them just to note that they are there along with all the standard ones we encounter. My first rule of thumb: If it is in my way and changing where I'm going to walk is not going to work then it goes if it is not then it stays. Second: Is it getting in the way of the development of a plant I want and need (ie shading it out) if so it goes. Third: I like it but I know in coming years I wont want it there and I know it has a mega tap root (ie thistle), it goes. A big part of if I eliminate a weed is yes selfishly is it in my way AND do I like it? Break they myths but if you don't like that weed it is your garden nix it and keep smiling :) In about a week all the more open areas of my Forest will BURST into a mammoth display of the sunflower and milkweed. Tall with paths through it from here to there. full of sent and pollinators. It is a wonderous time. Let me know about the rust I really need help on that one! :) William
Great video, ripping up weeds… blarg don’t get me started. I would love to see some videos about what some herbaceous pioneers are communicating. Especially field bindweed and thistles. I know dandelions are just saying, look at me I am a strong plant!
Thanks for sharing your insights. As an older gardner, I find practices like no-till and mulching save so much work and will enable me to garden far longer than more labor intensive methods. Also more economically. Oh and the food produced is so much better. Love your perspective on weeds! Better to befriend them than spend forever fighting them. .
Hi. New gardener here. It feels like roses are an exception to the rule. Are they really? I have daisies that have been devastated by fungus. Do I remove them?
What about dormant oil & copper? That's the only spraying I do, during winter months, on fruit trees only... Except for targeted death to bagworms. I see it as part of IPA along with good plant spacing, diversity, etc.
"Petrochemical fertilisers"?? I don't think so! Commercial fertilisers are inorganic salts of minerals and nitrogen. Every piece of land in this vast country of Australia is deficient in phosphorus, and no amount of added organic mulch or planting of "dynamic accumulators" is going to correct this imbalance. I love the idea of using rock dust. But ten times the mass of rock dust is required, as of say, superphosphate. That us ten times the effort and cost to cart it from the supplier, and ten times the energy to apply it. Then, it works very slowly, and only in an acidic environment. If the soil is neutral or alkaline, that phosphorus will be unavailable. Availability can be increased through him If avid, but a huge quantity of decomposing organic matter would be required to activate that rock dust. Lovely in theory. But on a farm scale, the ten times financial and energy cost is absolutely not financially viable, and impractical. Australia is the country with the most recent history of agriculture. All other continents have had thousands of years of arable or intensive farming, tilling, livestock farming, manure additions, etc, where Australia has infertile soils that had never been farmed in any way, and almost starved the first settlers who tried to grow crops. Our native trees are adapted to soils with very low phosphorus content, but pasture and food crops require high phosphorus. It's a serious problem. Not every piece of land will respond the same way to no till and addition of organic matter. Using organic compost, mulch or manure from soils that are deficient in minerals, will not improve the mineral content. At some point, minerals must be added in a timely, sufficient and cost effective way, or results will never be good. There is a place for judicious use of chemical fertilisers.
The most common fertilizer used in the United States is urea which is produced using natural gas and petcoke , so yes it is a petro-chemical fertilizer. As I said, when you were dealing with landscapes that have been depleted, sometimes you need to feed and regenerate the landscape. Especially when it comes to adding minerals that have been washed away by erosion and extractive practices. Dynamic accumulators are only a tiny tool in the toolbox of restoration ag and resilient gardening. I would never assert they could “fix” a landscape previously depleted by intensive industrial ag. Also, this video is aimed at gardeners, not large scale farmers needing to remediate and repair 1000s of acres. However, I would argue that not every landscape should be used for annual agriculture. A big part of permaculture is site-specific design. Reading the room, so to speak, and working with natural conditions and benefits of an area to maximize fertility and abundance. That doesn’t mean the Outback nor the Sonoran desert are going to become candidates for lush subtropical food forests or fields of wheat and barley.
@@ParkrosePermaculture I researched urea a bit more. I doubt it's the most used fertiliser in Australia, as we have such phosphorus and potassium-poor soils, whereas your soils naturally contain much higher amounts of those minerals. Natural gas is a raw ingredient in the process to make ammonia, NH4. CO2 is a by-product, which is combined with ammonia to produce urea. When urea is applied to crops, it releases CO2 again, which is actually a good thing, because being heavier than air, CO2 stays near the ground, where it is taken up by plants in the presence of sunlight. Plants require CO2 as their food, essential to produce carbohydrates. So not only does urea add essential nitrogen to the soil, but contrary to current flawed opinion, it has the benefit of also feeding those fertilised plants with their natural food source, CO2. It seems to me that using natural gas to ultimately produce urea, since our current system must have the stuff to feed 8 billion people, is valid. I wonder how much natural gas is wasted, by being released directly to the air? It could be converted to essential energy. The myth of the whole world's green energy being produced by solar and wind farms, stored in unimaginably vast lithium batteries, needs to be exposed and challenged. The organic process of course is ideal, but "green energy" isn't organically based. My soil gets its nitrogen supplements from clover and legumes that synthesise it in their roots, and from animal manures and vegetable matter returned to it. Human urine of course is almost universally wasted, a phenomenal resource that is disposed of at great cost. I have read that one person's annual urine output (about 800 litres, diluted 1 in 10) is enough to fertilise a garden producing all the fruit and vegetables eaten by that adult in one year. That's a home-grown organic fertiliser we all need to be using.
Yes! Here in OH I have heavy clay soil. I use a pitch fork to loosen, add compost in the fall and spring, and plant carrots “randomly” to loosen really dense areas.
I do pull poison ivy and poison hemlock. Those two are ones I will always pull without worrying about what they are trying to tell me about my soil 😆
I like to reuse the weeds I pull out as a "weed mulch" and put them back on the soil. I don't understand people who throw weeds away in yard waste bags because they're removing biomass from the system, which is usually then replaced with purchased compost or fertilizer (or sometimes not at all).
The main reason I weed is because our neighbors would complain otherwise. It would be nice to get rid of bylaws forcing you to cut the lawn and get rid of "unsightly weeds" as it's just classist bullshit. Lawns are so dumb, I am slowly working on getting rid of mine.
Is there are weeds that I don’t want and they have not gone to seed absolutely use them as mulch when I pull them up. Even if they have gone to seed a clip off the top and throw the rest back on the bed. That way the weed can contribute to the fertility of my garden even if it is no longer living there
My parents and grandparents never tilled at all. They did grow Comfrey to make a nasty smelling stew to fertilize their gardens and transplant Butterfly Weed into the veg garden to attract pollinators. This was 60 years ago.
At home, i 'read my weeds' to see what they are telling me, and then i find the more-useful-to-me version. I am remediating a given area of soil, and I put in comfrey, borage, yarrow, and nasturtium. I can chop and drop them all, the roots are doing different things that i need them to do, and they make a good cover crop and basically choke out everything else. I can use them for different purposes around the garden, too, where I am working actively -- so there's multi-uses for me. And, they do look pretty spring-through-autumn here, so it's a good option.
Thank you for this important information! I started gardening mostly ornamentals 10 years ago. I knew nothing but I refused to use any pesticides, fungicides, herbicides or even fertilizer. I thought I would have issues because this is what we're led to believe, but I have zero pests problems. My plants are healthy, and my soil has become better every year because I do leave the leaves on the beds over winter and make sure to remove the wet matted leaves in the spring. In 2020 I started veggie gardening mostly in containers, I reuse potting soil so I do mix organic fertilizer in the old potting soil, knowing the plant will use if needed unlike being forced to uptake it when conventional fertilizer is used. I especially love summer squashes, I seen one squash bug, one leaf with eggs from the squash bug and aphids on my milkweed. I removed the leaf and disposed of the bug. Besides that I let nature take care of the rest. Nature does take care of it. I would spend hours at a time removing weeds only for a whole new crop to appear the next day. So I use creeping thyme as ground cover for years and this year I planted a necterine tree ,I'm not spraying it I under planted this tiny tree with calendula and oregano to ward off pests and weeds. I will also be adding roman chamomile as a ground cover soon. Over the years the variety of butterflies, birds, bees, and other insects has been amazing, I lived in a highly congested urban area. When I started gardening it was about making my property beautiful and tidy but now it's about all the living creatures that visit. I do have small patch of grass in my back that is full of weeds. I started adding clover to it, mainly to fix nitrogen and to over take the weeds. I think it's beautiful and the bees love it!
Thanks!
Oh... I know you probably don't control this, but I don't like that this shows up... but I did love this video and did share it.
Great overview - I've been gardening this more bio-friendly way for decades 🍃
My 11 year old grandson is helping me build a garden at their house, and it's fun to give him nuggets of why we do what we do 💚
I think it's easy to feel like young permaculture systems are failures because they're not as ostensibly productive as either mature systems or those that are rigorously tended with artificial inputs. It's easy to see someone else's thriving garden and feel like you should just bite the bullet and use fertilizer/pesticide to see more immediate return on investment. I would love to see a video on the struggles you encountered early on and how to exercise patience with low initial yields.
I am very new to permaculture (and in a sense, gardening), and the thing that has helped me is to focus on the overall system care and individual plant care.
I discovered that this is a practice of joy. The joy of being in the garden, the joy of learning, and the joy of seeing and building on small successes.
For many things that are a struggle, such as aphids, i look at system elements like attracting predators and using companions to prevent aphids from 'finding' those plants which will take time to see if they work and develop, and in the mean time, will use neem and seaweed feed to prevent deep damage to the plants the aphids are affecting. Over time, I think we'll find balance in the garden, but in the mean time, i'm learning and enjoying a lot. :)
I planted a bing cherry in… 2020 maybe? Or early 2021. This year I got a beautiful crop of about a dozen fat cherries.
I’ve been eating a few every other day as a snack when I walk my dog.
I have a Rainier cherry I planted this year. No flowers. It’s just settling in. But I’m just enjoying having yet another tree in my yard.
Plant things you enjoy and can look forward to I think.
That’s what helped me.
Also useful flowers are SO HELPFUL. I pull up every day after work and I have a mass of annual and biennial flowers twinkling at me and making me just happy to be at home. It’s so nice.
If you are waiting for something to fruit, put something pretty nearby. Or useful. Or fun. Or some combination of the above. It adds a little happy bump yo your gardening so that you can enjoy something even while you wait.
excellent. peace to you and yours.
I was so surprised this year when I started some vegetables in my new raised bed how with out using pesticides but simply growing the vegetables at the right time there's a huge diversity of insects in just the raised bed but I haven't had any sort of imbalance when it comes to pests and I definitely think it's because there's so many types of insects present to maintain that balance. The only intervention I do is picking off the eggs of the squash vine borers from my zucchini plant but other than that it manages itself for the most part.
I will definitely use some organic pest/fungicides when pest and disease pressure becomes too threatening. Organic pest control can be as simple as handpicking caterpillars, there's nothing wrong with trying to tip the balance in your favor as long as you don't go crazy and nuke everything.
@@clobberelladoesntreadcomme9920 that's definitely true. For me I try to just ease into it with the organic pesticides as necessary but I try to do all the preventative stuff first.
Loved this ❤️
I am trying to make a garden as close to free as possible. it is really a fun change. I have purchased a rack and a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
Thank you for your video. I’m an organic gardener and I have noticed on three different occasions where I decided to use synthetic fertilizers after growing the plants organically and all three plants died exactly how you explained in the video. When you use the synthetic fertilizer the plant puts on this vigorous growth so you think wow! The plant is doing awesome and then it gets attacked by insects and the plants has no defence and dies. I will always grow organically it’s better for the environment and humans.
I just found you today but have already watched a dozen videos. They've all been great. I'm only half way through this one and I think it's the best yet. Thank you so much, gonna share it : )
Wow...point #4!
Thank you for another great video! Since I started gardening, I have struggled with the weeds myth. Every time I weeded I wondered if it was really the right thing to do. This year finally I got confirmation that having "weeds" around mature plants is a positive thing as I noticed that the compost in the areas that had more weeds was a lot more moist than in the areas I had cleared around the vegetables. This busted for me the myth that the weeds were competing for water as they were clearly in fact helping keep that water in the soil. I now, rather than pull the weeds that happen to grow, trim them and drop the clippings in the beds. Of course my veg beds look messy, but I water less often and my veggies grow happily in their weedy forest.
As a child, my dad used to till for a tiny garden of a few tomatoes and green beans. It seemed such a brutal way to garden, that I have spent all my years gardening exploring how to avoid using such methods.
I love these types of videos!
Love your perspective. I grew up learning about the natural world from my dad, who was a forester. The way natural systems work just make so much more sense than the methods used in industrial agriculture. Discovering no-till, no-dig gardening was a lightbulb moment that made so much feel possible for me.
God bless you Angela!
Haha, I got into permaculture via foraging rather than gardening - I’d never gardened before, but I’m an avid forager. I don’t weed the weeds, I eat ‘em! Actually, I’m rather looking forward to finding some in my garden, as I’m trying to overcome a rhizomatous zoysia grass lawn (shudder).
Excellent video. Especially love the reminder that weeds speak to us and often act as a translator/communicator/teacher between nature and ourselves.
I’m curious how do we feed the soil when it comes to container gardening? I unfortunately can only do patio gardening at the moment.
I drop banana peels and small bits of quick degrading food scraps. Egg shells for calcium...cofee grounds for nitrogen erc
Understanding your micro climate is important to success. Even though we're in zone 8, summers are more like zone 9 or 10, with temps easily over 90 degrees. I started reading a realized that a lot of our 'classic' veggies, struggle in those temperatures no matter how much you water no matter how much you fertilize, everything is going to struggle in summer here. Looking at how much sun/shade you get is a key to success and planting what can thrive there, not what everyone else has. Our garden has only 7 hours of sunlight at any given time, but during the day, it is easy to assume that the garden is getting all kinds of direct, harsh, sun. The reality is, yes it is getting direct harsh middle of the day sun, but it is shaded most of the day. So that limits what we can grow. Then, we are on a clay hardpan that used to be a cow pasture....there is literally an old creek bed that runs through the property. If you till this, you will get thousands of noxious weeds that have been buried since the 80's. Plus, in creek beds, the clay runs deep, deep, deep. Borage is a fantastic clay busting mineral mining plant that moves from place to place. It could be considered "weedy" but it really moves itself to a new patch once it's work is done. We have to accept that our yard works in a different way than others and sometimes, seeds that I plant, won't germinate until the NEXT YEAR. Which could be frustrating if we were tilling every year. But they do come up, on their own timeline....which is so much better!
Hello everyone,
How do I manage the creeping thistle in my front and backyard? How do I manage my soil to have less thistle?
It’s all opposite of how I was taught growing up in Appalachia. It’s taken years for me to convince my family that we should try other methods of gardening. During the winter I called up local tree services, and power companies and gathered up all the mulch I could find. I made a few mulch beds and got started. We’ve had some record heat here this spring into summer, and it has been quite dry for us at times. I think I may have made them believers of the no till method. Just the water retention alone is a miracle, not to mention all the other benefits. I’ve also somewhat unintentionally allowed swaths of weeds to grow in between the beds, and although some may consider it unsightly, it has been such a blessing. I had heard of trap planting before and wanted to try it, and I had intentions of actually planting some trap gardens, but I wound up not having the time and resources, not that it mattered, because the weeds did it for me. I’ve watched as swarms of Japanese beetles flock to the tall weeds growing in between my beds, and throughout the field surrounding it. Not one of my plants has been damaged by insects so far. I think my family is beginning to see the benefits of allowing nature to take the lead. I have so much to learn still, and I’ve made so many mistakes this year. So many things didn’t get finished, and I’ve slacked off a lot over the last month, but it happens. The tomatoes are still loaded down. Things are still growing, and flourishing. I’m excited to see the progress moving forward in the coming years, and I’m grateful for the milestones I’ve reached now. Thank you for your channel and all of the wonderful content you create, this is one of my favorite channels!
Do you have any suggestions for groundhogs? This is my first year planting with these principals and I decided to put up a wire fence to protect my plants. I did realize it is going to prevent other beneficial species from entering the area, like frogs to eat my slugs.
I often say there are things nature knows that we will never figure out, yet some people would think they know better
I’ve made my garden beds and feed my garden with weeds, compost tea made of weeds, mulched with weeds and other homemade yard waste compost. I’ve never bought anything for my food forest but seeds and very few plants. Yes it takes a long time but everything builds up over time, definitely not an insta-garden. 😂 I practice everything you mentioned in this video and it works. Work with nature for balance.
I took our state's master gardener training, and all four of those myths are included in one way or another.
Bingo! :) Which leads me to a question I have for you and a couple of comments of my own. First the question :) I enjoy putting some ornamentals about (as do you) to promote that "wow factor" both for myself and my neighborhood. Makes for nice relationships :) Given that I've been paying particular attention when you mention or pass by your rosses. Every year I struggle with rust on some of mine. This year especially bad and to the point that I'm considering getting rid of those particular ones and replacing with a new variety (but that teaches me nothing). I have not seen much rust on yours .... just a little here and there. Do you just not have that problem? If you do what have you done to minimalize it. Now first! The standard suggestions I've already done for many years: cut out and dispose of diseased portions, prune to allow air and sun, spray with different concoctions of organic oils/backing soda etc. So what is your take?
Now on weeds :) I plant Dutch White Clover on purpose :) Here in Boise sunflowers grow VERY well and seed themselves but I put in other types and colors to enhance that. I also have a great deal of Showy Milkweed that I introduced and it took off. These are my favorites. I mention them just to note that they are there along with all the standard ones we encounter. My first rule of thumb: If it is in my way and changing where I'm going to walk is not going to work then it goes if it is not then it stays. Second: Is it getting in the way of the development of a plant I want and need (ie shading it out) if so it goes. Third: I like it but I know in coming years I wont want it there and I know it has a mega tap root (ie thistle), it goes. A big part of if I eliminate a weed is yes selfishly is it in my way AND do I like it? Break they myths but if you don't like that weed it is your garden nix it and keep smiling :) In about a week all the more open areas of my Forest will BURST into a mammoth display of the sunflower and milkweed. Tall with paths through it from here to there. full of sent and pollinators. It is a wonderous time.
Let me know about the rust I really need help on that one! :)
William
Great video, ripping up weeds… blarg don’t get me started. I would love to see some videos about what some herbaceous pioneers are communicating. Especially field bindweed and thistles.
I know dandelions are just saying, look at me I am a strong plant!
Thanks for sharing your insights. As an older gardner, I find practices like no-till and mulching save so much work and will enable me to garden far longer than more labor intensive methods. Also more economically. Oh and the food produced is so much better. Love your perspective on weeds! Better to befriend them than spend forever fighting them.
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Hi. New gardener here. It feels like roses are an exception to the rule. Are they really? I have daisies that have been devastated by fungus. Do I remove them?
What about dormant oil & copper? That's the only spraying I do, during winter months, on fruit trees only... Except for targeted death to bagworms. I see it as part of IPA along with good plant spacing, diversity, etc.
"Petrochemical fertilisers"?? I don't think so!
Commercial fertilisers are inorganic salts of minerals and nitrogen.
Every piece of land in this vast country of Australia is deficient in phosphorus, and no amount of added organic mulch or planting of "dynamic accumulators" is going to correct this imbalance.
I love the idea of using rock dust. But ten times the mass of rock dust is required, as of say, superphosphate. That us ten times the effort and cost to cart it from the supplier, and ten times the energy to apply it. Then, it works very slowly, and only in an acidic environment. If the soil is neutral or alkaline, that phosphorus will be unavailable. Availability can be increased through him If avid, but a huge quantity of decomposing organic matter would be required to activate that rock dust. Lovely in theory.
But on a farm scale, the ten times financial and energy cost is absolutely not financially viable, and impractical.
Australia is the country with the most recent history of agriculture. All other continents have had thousands of years of arable or intensive farming, tilling, livestock farming, manure additions, etc, where Australia has infertile soils that had never been farmed in any way, and almost starved the first settlers who tried to grow crops. Our native trees are adapted to soils with very low phosphorus content, but pasture and food crops require high phosphorus.
It's a serious problem. Not every piece of land will respond the same way to no till and addition of organic matter. Using organic compost, mulch or manure from soils that are deficient in minerals, will not improve the mineral content.
At some point, minerals must be added in a timely, sufficient and cost effective way, or results will never be good.
There is a place for judicious use of chemical fertilisers.
The most common fertilizer used in the United States is urea which is produced using natural gas and petcoke , so yes it is a petro-chemical fertilizer.
As I said, when you were dealing with landscapes that have been depleted, sometimes you need to feed and regenerate the landscape. Especially when it comes to adding minerals that have been washed away by erosion and extractive practices.
Dynamic accumulators are only a tiny tool in the toolbox of restoration ag and resilient gardening. I would never assert they could “fix” a landscape previously depleted by intensive industrial ag.
Also, this video is aimed at gardeners, not large scale farmers needing to remediate and repair 1000s of acres. However, I would argue that not every landscape should be used for annual agriculture. A big part of permaculture is site-specific design. Reading the room, so to speak, and working with natural conditions and benefits of an area to maximize fertility and abundance. That doesn’t mean the Outback nor the Sonoran desert are going to become candidates for lush subtropical food forests or fields of wheat and barley.
@@ParkrosePermaculture
I researched urea a bit more. I doubt it's the most used fertiliser in Australia, as we have such phosphorus and potassium-poor soils, whereas your soils naturally contain much higher amounts of those minerals.
Natural gas is a raw ingredient in the process to make ammonia, NH4.
CO2 is a by-product, which is combined with ammonia to produce urea.
When urea is applied to crops, it releases CO2 again, which is actually a good thing, because being heavier than air, CO2 stays near the ground, where it is taken up by plants in the presence of sunlight. Plants require CO2 as their food, essential to produce carbohydrates.
So not only does urea add essential nitrogen to the soil, but contrary to current flawed opinion, it has the benefit of also feeding those fertilised plants with their natural food source, CO2.
It seems to me that using natural gas to ultimately produce urea, since our current system must have the stuff to feed 8 billion people, is valid. I wonder how much natural gas is wasted, by being released directly to the air? It could be converted to essential energy. The myth of the whole world's green energy being produced by solar and wind farms, stored in unimaginably vast lithium batteries, needs to be exposed and challenged.
The organic process of course is ideal, but "green energy" isn't organically based.
My soil gets its nitrogen supplements from clover and legumes that synthesise it in their roots, and from animal manures and vegetable matter returned to it.
Human urine of course is almost universally wasted, a phenomenal resource that is disposed of at great cost.
I have read that one person's annual urine output (about 800 litres, diluted 1 in 10) is enough to fertilise a garden producing all the fruit and vegetables eaten by that adult in one year.
That's a home-grown organic fertiliser we all need to be using.
Thanks!
Thank you!