Since I discovered you about 3 days ago, I've legit watched over 5 hours straight of your videos. Not skipping through or anything. You are such an inspiration to me!
Informative, concise just out walking the dog! Tells you then demonstrates within the garden of which looks like paradise. Very cool videos. guy is like the Spock of gardening, but more useful
Appreciate the video and the explanations throughout. Love that you explain the thinking and rationale for doing things. Super effective teaching. Thanks bro!
Honestly, it's the number one thing I would look for in a new property. Stream or river is a very close second, but a constant flowing artesian well is just bonkers.
I love your passion for teaching and the great sense of humour you have about yourself. Such a wonderful way to learn. I had no idea about the leaves blocking oxygen to the soil if unmowed. I learn so much each time I watch. Thank you!
You are so welcome! Thanks so much for commenting. It's pretty cool to see my hobby grow as much as it has (this channel and the garden also). I'm so blessed to have you all on this journey with me.
I call it lazy gardening :) My fave type,... which is why I have no compost box. I put layers of mulch, leaves, twigs, branches, weeds as I get them. In time I am able to get a little hill that makes my flat area more interesting. I also collect the cuttings or weeds in buckets filled with water. The green stuff turns into watery manure (my Indian Runners' fave drink and insect collector). In time I turn the buckets upside down and this way add food to the hill in which some select plants already grow The bucket is left for some hours in this position to avoid the smell distribution. On taking the bucket off I cover the content with a bit of soil and it spreads its goodness whenever it gets wet again. Lazy gardening at its best :)
“I actually have one here, this is hilarious!” I appreciate you so much! Please keep doing what you’re doing. Fingers crossed we never go back to losing so much of our precious time to commuting.
I’m a new subscriber. I appreciate so much about these videos: limited editing gimmicks so I can focus on the content; there is detail but with constant touch points with the core principles of permaculture; and the “braking for ---- life” (soil, insect, mycorrhizae etc.) I also enjoy the quality of the comments. You are attracting such cool people. Thank you for your work, the morning voice, the humour, the intelligence. Total quality.
Thanks Barbara, and welcome to the family. You aren't kidding about the comment sections of the videos. The people who are watching me are SO knowledgeable. I learn so much myself in the comments. It's truly a fantastic community here. I take that as a sign I'm doing something right, if I'm attracting these kinds of people.
Where I live in Woodacre CA, due to water issues, the county has left a 157 acre golf course to die. It has been about 3 years now. It is so ugly. Most of the cedars and pine trees have died. The ponds still remain alive with bullfrogs. Evasive weeds surround the landscape. I feel if there was some sort of organization, that could come in a restore land to a natural habitat for wildlife would be amazing. I just don't know why when things like this happen across our states, we don't have some sort of organization (private or public) to come in and fix this mess, and restore it to something the wildlife can benefit from, and the public can enjoy viewing as a natural sanctuary, instead of an eye sore. I guess we need a military budget to make this happen...........................It seems like you could be an amazing consultant to properties such as this - to help counties help restore land that has been damaged from "us" and help nature take it back through proper plantings and seeding.
Hiya! Late Q for your Q&A, here goes: is there any literature you can recommend for anyone, ranging from starters to more advanced plant aficionados? If not books, any other materials or sources you would vouch for would help greatly. Thank you for your work and for sharing your knowledge!
Depends on what you want. Do you want the pure science? Stuff from Dr. Elaine Ingham and Dr Paul Stamets are great. Mycelium running is one of my favorite books of all time. General system design? Permaculture One, Permaculture Designers Manual, One Straw Revolution are great. More gardening based? Gaia's Garden, The resilient farm homestead, Permaculture: Principles Pathways beyond sustainability, Plants for a Future, The reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation, the plant propagators bible, The nature and properties of soils, Edible forest gardens volumes 1 and 2, The holistic Orchard, Wild edibles, The new greener thumb, The backyard homestead, Uncommon fruits for every garden, Restoration Agriculture, The market gardener, Everything I want to do it illegal, Desert or Paradise, Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Nutrients, & Teaming with Fungi... That should do for a coronavirus lockdown or twelve. That's just top of my head books that I've enjoyed - although I do actually like getting into science and research papers more than actual books. :)
It's only temporary until I can get trees to support the grapes that will grow on it. Well, temporary for a decade or so. I'm hoping the grapes here do really well, and fill in all the spaces. This was thrown up really quickly, because I figured the grapes would really help tie it all together and strengthen it with their natural strength/vines.
I am really enjoying your channel It is so great that you give us so much information I love learning about all the topics linked to gardening Such as permaculture, soil micro biome, wildlife Etc
Disregard my previous question you answered it about a minute and a half later. This is a good example of why you should listen to the whole video before making a comment LOL
Funny enough, this is a comment that I got my most negative comments on. People think that it's cruel for nature to do what nature does. That's life folks. Stuff in nature eats stuff in nature.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Really? I think some people look for ways to get offended. Food chain people, everyone eats something. We have a lot of invasive bugs here with online shipping and immigration. Anything that keeps populations under control is worth trying.
I love the snail sacrifice altar idea. When I put them in the feeder I think they just crawl off and fall back into the yard...I"ll see if I can put a bowl of water or something this year.
my actual exclamation upon realising you've only gone and made a 40 minute video response would not be suitable for a family audience! but i'm blown away - watching now!
lol. I learned so much from this video. I am going to remember 1: sacrificial altar for birds, and 2: You bad, you die. You good, you eat. Basically anything where you say something and in my mind I’m thinking “NOM NOM NOM!” I’m going to remember that. :D Chop and drop has a whole new meaning for me now. I’m gonna be out there cutting leaves and putting them by the things I want and I’ll be saying NOM NOM NOM every time.
I planted 5 blueberries in a line 6 months ago. I think I might take your advice and move around 3-4 of them in random spots with random stuff growing around it.
Hi, I just discovered your videos and have been enjoying them. I am currently converting my traditional vegetable garden to hooglekultures. I also love planting trees and have hundreds on my 2 acre property in central New-Brunswick. I think permaculture will be a good fit for me. Keep up the good work, go habs!
Haha you lost me at the end there. Welcome aboard, and I think it's about to change your whole life. Welcome to the first part of the rest of your life :)
Great vid. Hard times this end. I'll get through more of your work as soon as i can. Thank you for your vidoes, I love your work, so understandable, so instructional. Best wishes to you and yours. Stay safe, grow soil and Peace. m
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy There is a Tolkien quote, Aaragorn I think.. "The praise of the Praiseworthy is a high reward" or something close; well that is how I feel now; regarding your 'Thank you so much'. You don't know, unless someone tells you; 'how' you are affecting 'anothers' life. So I will tell you what it is that you do, to my life. I work with SEN youth at a climbing wall, as well as new 'Covid self employment back up plans... la de da - 1st world problems... what that means is many 12/ 13 hrs days trying to keep rent and food etc etc. What helps me is seeing that at least somewhere, someone has found a solution, or at least a way to keep finding solutions..... It just gives me hope for the future. If not mine, then at least someone who can pass on the message of localised, sustainable, enjoyable, expansive and ecological food production; to the next generation. If I had any ability to get land I would, I just have not had any financial means to be able to try it. But, even 'if by proxy', I have such enjoyment from seeing how it could be done because it is beeing done, because you are showing it. You may not know how much joy you give, unless someone tells you. Consider yorself Sir; TOLD!!!
WOW!! What an amazing compliment. You made my day. Heck, my year. This is why I'm spending my free time taking videos of plants, hours editing infront of the computer, and more hours answering comments.... I want to give people hope. You didn't have to say any of that, but you took time out of your busy day to do it, and I can't thank you enough. Namaste friend.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy 'Tis but an honour; Sir! Keep up the good, ... in fact excellent work. I hope it will get seen by the world.Namaste, peace and Love... my friend.
Hey, I'm one of the 2000 new people coming in from Reddit. Looking to learn a lot more about this before I start asking stupid questions. Right now the distinction between fungal and bacterial is completely new to me. I've got a compost heap and I've been using that for everything in my vegetable garden so this is definitely going to be benificial learning. Might even have to reconsider my random veggies per plot approach to my vegetable garden and try a food forest instead; though my garden may be a little too small to do it properly. I'll have a look around your channel to see what dedicated videos you've got on the subject beyond the one you linked on Reddit.
The channel has a lot of update videos and walk arounds. If you are looking for pure content, I would suggest sorting my videos by popular and watching those first. Those are the videos I post links to in reddit because they have more info in them, and thus those ones get more views.
Obviously, I had to make a video reply! th-cam.com/video/40YuEvY_Xss/w-d-xo.html Unfortunately I got rather long-winded, so to summarise once again for the tl;dw audience, it's about 1 minute of me saying thanks very much for the advice, and about 18 minutes of me rambling on all over the place about watering and bees and whatever else came to mind...
Awe man, I was in the middle of something in my own garden and checked TH-cam (bad habit), now I'm in my shed watching your video... Canadian Permaculture is a saboteur! ; ). Lol Problem is, I could save a whole years work of work if I take an hour to digest what you are teaching me about slugs. Habitat knowledge in the garden is awesome in that way? Now I'm looking for ways to build a bird sacrifice alter. I'm on day 51 of quarentine to avoid covid-19.
Haha sorry Russ! Anything will do, some people even put out plates or bowls. The only thing with a bowl in the floor is that birds will have to compete with rabbits. A bowl on a table works well. Just keep in mind that the bowl can't be too deep or they won't use it. Ideal bird drinking is as high as possible, like a perch, and as shallow as possible, so they can escape. They drink from wandering streams in nature, and they love open shallow pooling areas with lots of escape routes. Some of their favorite human made drinking spots are fountains, especially some kind of basalt monolith water fountain. They love that. Just put yourself in the birds tiny shoes.. imagine some ground predator or air predator was always looking to eat you, what would you want to drink out of. That's what they want also. Then just stick a nice flat rock in the middle of the water, and put the slugs on it. Then watch how fast the birds come. They don't last more than a few seconds for me, but I am surrounded by birds all over. I can hear them singing right now.
No altar needed. Buy a few Runner ducks. They will take all the slugs and give you even more time for watching permaculture videos :) You can see mine on a guard tour! Enjoy!
@@RussellBallestrini You mean where I got them from. Well, I live in Poland, Europe. I found the seller in my country whose ducks I liked because I wanted each in a diff colour. I also wanted only females (the seller sent me 4+1 which made me angry, but now I think this is the best option). The ducks can change their sex anyway. I asked many questions, ordered them and they came in a package by postal order. The spent 24 hrs inside. But if packed well with holes, this is no harm to them. They love water so a little pond or at least some dive in area is what makes them happy. You must realise they can eat all you have up to ab 120cm. They are good at jumping and swimming. Can fly up a bit. They love my berries, lettuce, flowers. But I let them run over all the garden. K only made a low fence to keep them from my veggies and berries up to August. Then they will roam the whole area up to March in search for the insects I dislike. They are cool ducks. I have ppl coming with kids to show them the uncommon birds. They chase stray cats, birds, and my fog is keeping a distance. The male tried biting his back so he watches back twice now when passes them by. A live comedy. Love them! ❤️
Living roof is such a cool idea. It has some challenges with high load on the structure. So it has to be engineered properly. But I love the idea of these. I love the sunken thermal houses that encorporate these into the design. Earthships.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I love the concept of earthships too, but freezing depth and amount of sunlight throughout the year seems to me like things that might have a bit of an impact on the design, construction and use of earthships. Maybe there are working sollutions I just haven't seen yet.
I want to start off by thanking you so much for your wealth of information and knowledge that you have shared. Sometimes its overwhelming with everything. I want to build compost and need a lot to rejuvenate my soil but I am having issue getting enough of the right materials. What do we have access to that we can get for free? I will have access to lots of leaves in the fall. I am not sure where we can get organic manure and dont have enough greens to add . what do you recommend?
Anything organic works. If it was once alive, it can be composted. Good sources of browns are leaves, woodchips, newspaper, sawdust, cardboard. Good sources of greens are any plant that grows near you (grass, comfrey, whatever), as well as urine, coffee grinds, etc.
Hmm. My chicken ate a slug which clogged her crop, and she was so sick I had to kill her. Long time ago. I know ducks can eat slugs, but not geese. Ok, I need to do more research.
If yoy mean the forever that borders my property, that has been here long before I got here. If you mean the artesian well overflow stream, here is the videos on it - keep in mind this was just at the time I decided I would make videos and post them to TH-cam. So I don't have any videos of actually digging it out. th-cam.com/video/ErjRtUu6J2E/w-d-xo.html
This is a follow up question(ishs) to the last I asked about aerobic compost. It makes sense that there should be tunnels, and tracks from different creatures, but if we were to oxidize all of our soils prior to planting wouldn’t a lot of the nitrogen return to the atmosphere as well as the greenhouse methane produced in decomposition? These are my thoughts… if we turn all of our compost then wed be taking all of the carbon, nitrogen, and whatever else and throwing it in the air so that the small part that remains is viable for plants. I feel like that isn’t how creation was set up and that the success of tillage has only been for short term profits rather than long term stewardship of the earth. Like your unturned compost pile near a swale that you showed in the last video where you planted extra seeds, the plants looked great. Wouldn’t all of the soil biology be more established if it weren’t disturbed? If the microbes aren’t established then wouldn’t the available minerals be tied up or immobilized by oxidation? Are we serving the ground that we came from or the garden we were placed in? … that’s not an accusation, but an honest question that I ask myself
You are bang on. Long term the best method is as little disruption as possible. The turning of compost should only happen in the first month or so of soil life (good scraps starting to decompose), but in the grand scheme of things, that's such a small portion of that future soils lifetime. It is only done because food scraps in that state can go anaerobic so easily and methane is really bad to produce. The long term should minimize disruption. The food forest soils for example are never turned and dug, ajd they actually stay quite aerobic without the disruption due to all the macroscopic life that moves in.
"Put slugs on a rock in the middle of water and they won't go in the water" This hasn't been my experience at all. I wonder if everyone puts slugs on a rock and just assume the birds eat them when they're not there later. My (aquatic, apparently) slugs in the UK don't mind slithering underwater, along the bottom, and to freedom! Your channel is awesome dude, you're an inspiration and I'm happy how fast it's growing! Keep on keeping on mate.
Yeah, it.may not be 100%. I have my "altar" in visible range of my main chill spot of the pond. I actually get to watch the birds swoop in and grab them up. I'm sure a few get to crawl out though. I also have TONS of birds. Hitchcock would be proud.
Leaves are definitely an issue that I deal with considering I have 3 approx 100 yr old oaks on my 1 1/2 acre parcel bordered buy a forest but in response to leaves matting and starving out oxygen. How are they being stirred up in the forest to prevent that issue?
They aren't. They smother the competition of the trees, then eventually break down. The soils themselves, under old trees, have tremendous oxygen holding capability due to all the soil organic matter and fungal networks, so they can handle a few months of smothering in the fall before the leaves break down. The advanced forest soil and fungal networks also can break the leaves down very quickly compared to a new forest planting on what used to be grass. Basically, a forest can handle it because it's had a thousand years to change the soil ecology. So for a new forest where the soils aren't that established , it's a good idea to shred the leaves if we can, to help speed the decomposition process.
Hey man found your channel just subscribed. I have a few questions. When prepping the ground do you put wood chips under or on top of ccardboard? And since I intend to make an apple tree guild would it be wise to use the mushrooms or animal manure? Please maybe show me the steps on repping the location for a guild.
On top for sure. I have a video specifically on that! I will link it in a separate comment, incase youtube deletes it. They don't like links in comments. Let me know if you see it.
I'm a bit confused about chop n drop vs composting in a bin - when do you do one vs the other? Can whole leaves still be composted effectively in a bin if left sufficiently long? Just curious since it is easy to shred them anyway
Easy at small scales, a ton of extra labor at larger scales (or fuel inputs, if you use a tractor). Time and natural processes are your friends, added labor is your enemy.
Very informative! Its approaching fall for me now- so should I shred my leaves, then add green plant matter then wood chips or skip the plant matter? Also, to pine needles work for blueberries?- Ive heard varying reports on how they help acidify the soil. THANKS
For a future Q & A. My wife received a package of Atlantic Giant Pumpkins from Singapore. I saw this type of thing going around in 2020 but never came across it. She never orders seeds and neither of us would order seeds from Singapore. They do look like pumpkin seeds but it doesn't seem like a good idea to plant them. How would you handle this?
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy ok. That’s what I thought but my brain was telling me to clear out all the woodchips in the bed, lay compost and then put all the woodchips back. But that just didn’t sound right because I would be disturbing too much of the soil. 🫤
When I started, I put trees on 20 foot centers. Now I actually overplant, with the expectation that I may need to thin at some point, once competition picks up. For that reason, any tree planted closer than 20 feet from a large rootstock fruit tree tends to be a lower value, cheap to obtain tree such as a serviceberry. These will be trimmed at some point to release light to the more valuable trees. How close you plant thigs depends on how much money you want to spend. But if you can buy young trees in bulk, you can get trees for $1 to $10. Once you save seed and start trees yourself it's free. So I really like overplanting and then adjusting. This also makes your system more resilient to a sudden tree loss from a deer or small animal, or winter death, etc. I have roughly 90% success on tree plantings (younger trees fail more, especially in -30 degree winters), and every time it happened, there was already a new tree there growing and able to take over.
To directly answer you, my blueberries are 3 feet from my apricot and 2 feet from my autumn olive. My autumn olive is roughly 5 feet from my apricot. I would have no problem putting a serviceberry (full sized tree) where the autumn Olive is, and putting that autumn olive close to the fruit trees. Especially with Nitrogen fixers, I have no problem putting a nitrogen fixing bush 1 foot from a tree, because I know the N fixer will eventually be fully sacrificed to the fruit tree (slowly over roughly 10 years). Most nitrogen fixers cannot tolerate any shade (being pioneer plants, they evolved in full sun), and thus, even if I dont chop and drop a nitrogen fixer, it will get outcompete by any large tree with big leaves, naturally. So I definitely don't mind crowding fruit trees especially with N fixers. But bushes and trees? I dont mind surrounding trees with bushes. Its healthier for the system to crowd it. The concern is only your access to the tree during harvest. It's an ergonomic concern only (provided you have well mulched healthy soils - they can support tremendous density plantings).
Друже, я слышал что черника и ряд других кустов растут в кислой земле, то есть рядом с хвойниками им будет хорошо. И пока только планирую высадить чернику, голубику, бруснику и клюкву у себя, и не имею такого опыта. Вопрос: как у тебя растёт черника, что показана на видео в гильдии "щелочных" растений, да и к тому же рядом с азотофиксатором?
Конечно. Мой pH почвы - 6,7. Черники хочу 4.5. Даже рядом с моими соснами и кедрами мой pH почвы равен 6.5. Я пробовала выращивать там чернику, но листья все равно краснеют. Красные листья черники указывают на дефицит магния. Существует важный обмен катионов кальция и магния, который блокируется почвенным ph. На данный момент я выращиваю чернику в горшках, где мне легче контролировать уровень pH. Вместо этого я сосредотачиваюсь на Haskcaps, потому что они здесь так легко растут. Это следует моей стратегии: если что-то хочет умереть, оно должно умереть. Я заменяю на то, что хочет жить. ucanr.edu/sites/Salinity/files/247732display.png
Hello, what camera are you using? It makes great videos! At least they are of better quality than James Prigionis...I am considering to do videos of my own Food forest and I was wondering which camera to take. Right now I only own an iphone SE. That's not the way to do it I guess. If anybody else is reading my comment you can always share your opinions about which camera to use...it shall not be too expensive but do reasonable videos still...
Thanks, I am just using a Samsung A8 phone that my kids drop on the ground once a month. I typically try to keep phones as long as possible (I hate waste, especially electronic waste with so many previous metals gone forever), but I may replace this phone when my contract ends and I can get a new one. My phone previous to this was an iphone 4, and before that one was an old flip phone, so you can tell how long I hold onto phones! I'm curious about what phone I can get that will double as a great camera for my videos. If anyone has input, I also would love it.
Canadian Permaculture Legacy Thanks for this super fast answer! Maybe I‘ll try a first video with my iPhone as I also don‘t want to create unnecessary waste.
You talk a lot about your blueberries. Do you chop and drop or compost with something specific to ensure the correct soil acidity for the blueberries? I currently use a soil acidifier to try and keep my blueberries happy.
More and more I have moved away from blueberries for this reason. I don't want anything in my food forest that I have to keep adding stuff to (unless I can make it myself naturally like wood ash, compost that I make anyways and woodchips). But trying to keep blueberries going with azalea fertilizer or aluminum sulfate, etc, it's like trying to change the temperature of the world by using a space heater on your patio. Massive losses and inefficiencies and it's very temporary. For that reason I think the best way to grow blueberries when you don't have soil with pH 5 or lower is to just do them in pots. That way you can minimize how much product you use because you can control the pH of the pot a little easier than the pH of the earths soil local to the blueberry.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I have just heard of biochar this year. I am wondering if I could charge some biochar with ammonium sulfate for a longer slow release soil acidification that will not wash out as easy. My boys love blues....growing them for ourselves is a dream and they are my gardening white whale.
So would it be healthy for a tree to just have its leaves raked up around the tree and left to rot there? Is that improving the health of the tree or hurting it?
As long as the fertility (leaves) are returned to the soil, it is beneficial. As long as you aren't always raking bagging and carting them away then you are all good.
So why is it that we can chop and drop any other green stuff but when I comes to leaves it’s just too much to leave it there? Is it just the extreme thickness of the leaves?
It would happen with other things if we don't chop them into smaller bits. However greener items may have more nitrogen in them and break down faster, preventing matting. Leaves have a lot of carbon in them, and break down (relatively to say comfrey leaves) slowly. So they have a tendency to mat out more.
The paper thin bigleaf maple leaves here like to mat up, even naturally under a big tree. They don’t stay like that for long though, the little birds come along and make a mess of them, ruffling them up and making holes in them in search of worms and the like. So I think a little big of matting is no problem. Leaves will go slimy though if you put them too deep in a high rainfall area. Often under them is still visible mycelium though so it can’t be too bad down there if you see that. If you are adding a lot of leaves somewhere where you have black pure carbon soil, you already have so much pore space that good luck smothering it if you tried. And some leaves don’t do this at all, like hawthorn leaves, which are tiny so can’t form a mat, or rhododendron leaves which will all be curled, holding air.
Sounds good. I have a feeling though that the mycelium you think are are seeing is actually actinomycetes Bacteria. An anaerobic decomposer. It might be fungus, but it sounds more likely to be actinomycetes due to the anaerobic conditions. www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-actinomycetes-and-vs-fungi/
Interesting, thanks for the heads up. It seems really common for deep mulchers/composting folks to fear the unshredded leaf, which I think is batty. I glean about twenty pickup loads of leaves every fall from town. It would be absolutely loony, in my view, to shred all of them. Probably even if I had a nice shredder. I mulch with them, only a few inches thick, and make leaf mold and slow, no-turn compost/worm casts (because if you add manure or veggie scraps to the center of a leaf pile, you invariably start a compost worm farm, at least here in Western Oregon). They are more active in a heap like this than a bin because of the thermal mass of the big heap, and insulation of the leaves. I’m never worried about suffocating the ground because anytime I deep mulch with them, I either haven’t planted yet, or have already created fluffy black soil, which I don’t think can be smothered very easily. If one we’re worried about this, my advice is to make leaf mold from unshredded leaves a year in advance and mulch with that, just staying one season ahead with your leaf collection. It doesn’t take any extra labor or work that way...versus shredding every year.
Hi, couple questions. I've got a garden I'm working with for/with my mum in Australia (Victoria specifically). Firstly my mum has been putting down cardboard sheets with mulch on top following the advice of a friend. I think this is to kill weeds but this video's pretty much convinced me that we're probably screwing the soil by this method. Any advice on fixing this? At this point I'm going to be trying to chop it up a bit with a shovel. Secondly our climate is very much based around very hot try summers and flooding rains. Do you have any thoughts about managing this? We're currently constructing a dry riverbed and I'm doing my best to look for native plants that fit this climate. But I'd love any input.
No, the method you guys are using is perfect. I even have 2 guides on it, a grass to garden guide: th-cam.com/video/hAaHB_wqpIA/w-d-xo.html And a sheet mulching guide: th-cam.com/video/bjBLVSo0zeY/w-d-xo.html Unfortunately, in order to kill the grass, you must smother it. The best way to do that will also starve O2 to the soil. But don't worry, it will recover. It is a one time thing, and not a constant practice. Once O2 gets back down to the soil (once the cardboard decomposes), the soil microbiology will revert back to aerobes and the anaerobes will die off. I think of this like a one time double deep till. I hate tilling as a sessonal practice, but when you first start up a bed on compacted soil, a good deep till can be handy. Not needed, but also not terrible to do (compared to yearly tilling which is aweful).
For your second comment, swales, swales, swales, swales SWALES! Your situation is where swales are absolutely incredible. Capturing that large rain is so important when you won't get another for a long time. I have many many swale guides. Check those out and ask me any questions you have.
Thank you so much for your reply! I'm really glad I don't have to rework the cardboard. :P I think looking though your videos most of our gardens are in a stage where getting some native ground covers in is the next step. I've been looking through local nurseries. I've rewatched you swales video and been wandering around my garden a bit. We actually have something more or less like a swale formed at one part which is great, and I've got a few other places where I'm thinking we can easy put mini-swales in. They'll actually help solve another problem we have, our house is below our garden on a slope, so I can use these to make sure the pavers don't flood up to the door again. Question I have is can the trench of the swale be filled in and made level with some porous rocks or something similar? My mum has balance issues and I don't want to create to many small ditches. Second question, I'm thinking of putting some small pits in filled with river-rock and native grasses near where the stairs and ramp leading down to the house is to grab excess water, again to keep the house safe. What do you think of that as an idea?
Filling swales with stuff is definitely doable, it will just reduce the volume of water it can hold. Also keep in mind that organic debris will get washed into the swale and will get trapped by the rocks. It may require a dig out/ clean out every 7 years or so. Without rocks in it, you just scrape them out and all that stuff is great soil and compost. With rocks in it, it will just be a bit of a pain. For your second question, if I understand you correctly you are saying to dig little holes and fill them with rocks. This is kind of like a mix between a deep deepwell, a Zai, and a french drain. Essentially what this does is depress the water table around it. If the soil around it is sand, it will drain well, if it is clay, it will keep water for a while. I would say if the goal is to keep paths clear, go full out with a path lined with a french drain. Basically instead of a hole with rocks, dig a full trench and fill it with rock. It can be fairly small, like 6 inches wide and 1 foot deep. I would do that instead, but I would bury an O-pipe (weeping tile) under the rock.
Since I discovered you about 3 days ago, I've legit watched over 5 hours straight of your videos. Not skipping through or anything. You are such an inspiration to me!
Haha! Awesome. Comments like this is what makes all the time worthwhile.
Lol! Same... I'm feeling so Canadian rn....
"Bird Sacrifice Altar" sounds like ana amazing garden addition.
Informative, concise just out walking the dog! Tells you then demonstrates within the garden of which looks like paradise. Very cool videos. guy is like the Spock of gardening, but more useful
Awesome arbor. I love it! Thank you for the grapevine growing tip of leaving the vine hight to the overhead arbor.
Appreciate the video and the explanations throughout. Love that you explain the thinking and rationale for doing things. Super effective teaching. Thanks bro!
❤️
U have the perfect setting with the artesian well !
Honestly, it's the number one thing I would look for in a new property. Stream or river is a very close second, but a constant flowing artesian well is just bonkers.
I love your passion for teaching and the great sense of humour you have about yourself. Such a wonderful way to learn. I had no idea about the leaves blocking oxygen to the soil if unmowed. I learn so much each time I watch. Thank you!
You are so welcome! Thanks so much for commenting. It's pretty cool to see my hobby grow as much as it has (this channel and the garden also). I'm so blessed to have you all on this journey with me.
Great video. Love the arbor.🇨🇦🌷
I call it lazy gardening :) My fave type,... which is why I have no compost box. I put layers of mulch, leaves, twigs, branches, weeds as I get them. In time I am able to get a little hill that makes my flat area more interesting. I also collect the cuttings or weeds in buckets filled with water. The green stuff turns into watery manure (my Indian Runners' fave drink and insect collector). In time I turn the buckets upside down and this way add food to the hill in which some select plants already grow The bucket is left for some hours in this position to avoid the smell distribution. On taking the bucket off I cover the content with a bit of soil and it spreads its goodness whenever it gets wet again. Lazy gardening at its best :)
I love it. :)
great tip for slugs!
This the best explanation about soil process, tips and insights. You have a beautiful piece of paradise. Thank you and wish you all the best.
So kind of you 😀
“I actually have one here, this is hilarious!” I appreciate you so much! Please keep doing what you’re doing. Fingers crossed we never go back to losing so much of our precious time to commuting.
Same!
I’m a new subscriber. I appreciate so much about these videos: limited editing gimmicks so I can focus on the content; there is detail but with constant touch points with the core principles of permaculture; and the “braking for ---- life” (soil, insect, mycorrhizae etc.) I also enjoy the quality of the comments. You are attracting such cool people. Thank you for your work, the morning voice, the humour, the intelligence. Total quality.
Thanks Barbara, and welcome to the family. You aren't kidding about the comment sections of the videos. The people who are watching me are SO knowledgeable. I learn so much myself in the comments. It's truly a fantastic community here. I take that as a sign I'm doing something right, if I'm attracting these kinds of people.
Great channel. Really inspiring. I would love to be able to buy some land and to something similar.
Best wishes from Germany.
Where I live in Woodacre CA, due to water issues, the county has left a 157 acre golf course to die. It has been about 3 years now. It is so ugly. Most of the cedars and pine trees have died. The ponds still remain alive with bullfrogs. Evasive weeds surround the landscape. I feel if there was some sort of organization, that could come in a restore land to a natural habitat for wildlife would be amazing. I just don't know why when things like this happen across our states, we don't have some sort of organization (private or public) to come in and fix this mess, and restore it to something the wildlife can benefit from, and the public can enjoy viewing as a natural sanctuary, instead of an eye sore. I guess we need a military budget to make this happen...........................It seems like you could be an amazing consultant to properties such as this - to help counties help restore land that has been damaged from "us" and help nature take it back through proper plantings and seeding.
That would be so wonderful. Golf courses (as much as I love the sport) are an abomination.
Hiya! Late Q for your Q&A, here goes: is there any literature you can recommend for anyone, ranging from starters to more advanced plant aficionados? If not books, any other materials or sources you would vouch for would help greatly. Thank you for your work and for sharing your knowledge!
Depends on what you want. Do you want the pure science? Stuff from Dr. Elaine Ingham and Dr Paul Stamets are great. Mycelium running is one of my favorite books of all time.
General system design? Permaculture One, Permaculture Designers Manual, One Straw Revolution are great.
More gardening based? Gaia's Garden, The resilient farm homestead, Permaculture: Principles Pathways beyond sustainability, Plants for a Future, The reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation, the plant propagators bible, The nature and properties of soils, Edible forest gardens volumes 1 and 2, The holistic Orchard, Wild edibles, The new greener thumb, The backyard homestead, Uncommon fruits for every garden, Restoration Agriculture, The market gardener, Everything I want to do it illegal, Desert or Paradise, Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Nutrients, & Teaming with Fungi...
That should do for a coronavirus lockdown or twelve. That's just top of my head books that I've enjoyed - although I do actually like getting into science and research papers more than actual books. :)
I love the arbor!
It's only temporary until I can get trees to support the grapes that will grow on it. Well, temporary for a decade or so. I'm hoping the grapes here do really well, and fill in all the spaces. This was thrown up really quickly, because I figured the grapes would really help tie it all together and strengthen it with their natural strength/vines.
I am really enjoying your channel
It is so great that you give us so much information
I love learning about all the topics linked to gardening
Such as permaculture, soil micro biome, wildlife
Etc
I'm so glad you are here :) Thanks for taking time out of your day to leave a comment :)
Disregard my previous question you answered it about a minute and a half later. This is a good example of why you should listen to the whole video before making a comment LOL
haha it's all good, I answered anyways, as I can elaborate in comments a little more.
Bird sacrificial alter, that's awesome! Thanks for the giggle!
Funny enough, this is a comment that I got my most negative comments on. People think that it's cruel for nature to do what nature does. That's life folks. Stuff in nature eats stuff in nature.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Really? I think some people look for ways to get offended. Food chain people, everyone eats something. We have a lot of invasive bugs here with online shipping and immigration. Anything that keeps populations under control is worth trying.
I love the snail sacrifice altar idea. When I put them in the feeder I think they just crawl off and fall back into the yard...I"ll see if I can put a bowl of water or something this year.
Thanks! How did the weekend go? Did you get all that stuff planted? Thanks for stopping by my place :)
my actual exclamation upon realising you've only gone and made a 40 minute video response would not be suitable for a family audience! but i'm blown away - watching now!
Haha. Were great questions, and not many people take 30 minutes to make a video question and upload it to youtube, so you deserved a proper reply.
Things are looking nice over there.
lol. I learned so much from this video. I am going to remember 1: sacrificial altar for birds, and 2: You bad, you die. You good, you eat.
Basically anything where you say something and in my mind I’m thinking “NOM NOM NOM!” I’m going to remember that. :D Chop and drop has a whole new meaning for me now. I’m gonna be out there cutting leaves and putting them by the things I want and I’ll be saying NOM NOM NOM every time.
LOL 😆
You always can use chickens to shred leaves for you, if you have some.
I planted 5 blueberries in a line 6 months ago. I think I might take your advice and move around 3-4 of them in random spots with random stuff growing around it.
Hi, I just discovered your videos and have been enjoying them. I am currently converting my traditional vegetable garden to hooglekultures. I also love planting trees and have hundreds on my 2 acre property in central New-Brunswick. I think permaculture will be a good fit for me. Keep up the good work, go habs!
Haha you lost me at the end there. Welcome aboard, and I think it's about to change your whole life. Welcome to the first part of the rest of your life :)
Great vid. Hard times this end. I'll get through more of your work as soon as i can. Thank you for your vidoes, I love your work, so understandable, so instructional. Best wishes to you and yours. Stay safe, grow soil and Peace. m
Thank you so much
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy There is a Tolkien quote, Aaragorn I think.. "The praise of the Praiseworthy is a high reward" or something close; well that is how I feel now; regarding your 'Thank you so much'. You don't know, unless someone tells you; 'how' you are affecting 'anothers' life. So I will tell you what it is that you do, to my life. I work with SEN youth at a climbing wall, as well as new 'Covid self employment back up plans... la de da - 1st world problems... what that means is many 12/ 13 hrs days trying to keep rent and food etc etc. What helps me is seeing that at least somewhere, someone has found a solution, or at least a way to keep finding solutions..... It just gives me hope for the future. If not mine, then at least someone who can pass on the message of localised, sustainable, enjoyable, expansive and ecological food production; to the next generation. If I had any ability to get land I would, I just have not had any financial means to be able to try it. But, even 'if by proxy', I have such enjoyment from seeing how it could be done because it is beeing done, because you are showing it. You may not know how much joy you give, unless someone tells you. Consider yorself Sir; TOLD!!!
WOW!! What an amazing compliment. You made my day. Heck, my year. This is why I'm spending my free time taking videos of plants, hours editing infront of the computer, and more hours answering comments.... I want to give people hope.
You didn't have to say any of that, but you took time out of your busy day to do it, and I can't thank you enough.
Namaste friend.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy 'Tis but an honour; Sir! Keep up the good, ... in fact excellent work. I hope it will get seen by the world.Namaste, peace and Love... my friend.
"A forest grows on a fallen forest."
Hey, I'm one of the 2000 new people coming in from Reddit. Looking to learn a lot more about this before I start asking stupid questions. Right now the distinction between fungal and bacterial is completely new to me. I've got a compost heap and I've been using that for everything in my vegetable garden so this is definitely going to be benificial learning. Might even have to reconsider my random veggies per plot approach to my vegetable garden and try a food forest instead; though my garden may be a little too small to do it properly.
I'll have a look around your channel to see what dedicated videos you've got on the subject beyond the one you linked on Reddit.
The channel has a lot of update videos and walk arounds. If you are looking for pure content, I would suggest sorting my videos by popular and watching those first. Those are the videos I post links to in reddit because they have more info in them, and thus those ones get more views.
Obviously, I had to make a video reply! th-cam.com/video/40YuEvY_Xss/w-d-xo.html Unfortunately I got rather long-winded, so to summarise once again for the tl;dw audience, it's about 1 minute of me saying thanks very much for the advice, and about 18 minutes of me rambling on all over the place about watering and bees and whatever else came to mind...
Haha, awesome. I will check ot out tomorrow. Watching Forrest Gump with the kids in about 5 mins.
Awe man, I was in the middle of something in my own garden and checked TH-cam (bad habit), now I'm in my shed watching your video... Canadian Permaculture is a saboteur! ; ). Lol
Problem is, I could save a whole years work of work if I take an hour to digest what you are teaching me about slugs. Habitat knowledge in the garden is awesome in that way? Now I'm looking for ways to build a bird sacrifice alter. I'm on day 51 of quarentine to avoid covid-19.
Haha sorry Russ!
Anything will do, some people even put out plates or bowls. The only thing with a bowl in the floor is that birds will have to compete with rabbits.
A bowl on a table works well. Just keep in mind that the bowl can't be too deep or they won't use it. Ideal bird drinking is as high as possible, like a perch, and as shallow as possible, so they can escape. They drink from wandering streams in nature, and they love open shallow pooling areas with lots of escape routes. Some of their favorite human made drinking spots are fountains, especially some kind of basalt monolith water fountain. They love that.
Just put yourself in the birds tiny shoes.. imagine some ground predator or air predator was always looking to eat you, what would you want to drink out of. That's what they want also.
Then just stick a nice flat rock in the middle of the water, and put the slugs on it. Then watch how fast the birds come. They don't last more than a few seconds for me, but I am surrounded by birds all over. I can hear them singing right now.
No altar needed. Buy a few Runner ducks. They will take all the slugs and give you even more time for watching permaculture videos :) You can see mine on a guard tour! Enjoy!
@@Spark_Iskra_z_Polski where did you source your Runner ducks?
@@RussellBallestrini You mean where I got them from. Well, I live in Poland, Europe. I found the seller in my country whose ducks I liked because I wanted each in a diff colour. I also wanted only females (the seller sent me 4+1 which made me angry, but now I think this is the best option). The ducks can change their sex anyway. I asked many questions, ordered them and they came in a package by postal order. The spent 24 hrs inside. But if packed well with holes, this is no harm to them. They love water so a little pond or at least some dive in area is what makes them happy. You must realise they can eat all you have up to ab 120cm. They are good at jumping and swimming. Can fly up a bit. They love my berries, lettuce, flowers. But I let them run over all the garden. K only made a low fence to keep them from my veggies and berries up to August. Then they will roam the whole area up to March in search for the insects I dislike. They are cool ducks. I have ppl coming with kids to show them the uncommon birds. They chase stray cats, birds, and my fog is keeping a distance. The male tried biting his back so he watches back twice now when passes them by. A live comedy. Love them! ❤️
Argh, my dreams of a living roof food forest sound absolutely crushed :P
Living roof is such a cool idea. It has some challenges with high load on the structure. So it has to be engineered properly. But I love the idea of these. I love the sunken thermal houses that encorporate these into the design. Earthships.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I love the concept of earthships too, but freezing depth and amount of sunlight throughout the year seems to me like things that might have a bit of an impact on the design, construction and use of earthships.
Maybe there are working sollutions I just haven't seen yet.
I want to start off by thanking you so much for your wealth of information and knowledge that you have shared. Sometimes its overwhelming with everything. I want to build compost and need a lot to rejuvenate my soil but I am having issue getting enough of the right materials. What do we have access to that we can get for free? I will have access to lots of leaves in the fall. I am not sure where we can get organic manure and dont have enough greens to add . what do you recommend?
also in the fall, can we create a lazagni compost over my whole garden beds and simplify the compost process over the fall?
Anything organic works. If it was once alive, it can be composted. Good sources of browns are leaves, woodchips, newspaper, sawdust, cardboard. Good sources of greens are any plant that grows near you (grass, comfrey, whatever), as well as urine, coffee grinds, etc.
Hmm. My chicken ate a slug which clogged her crop, and she was so sick I had to kill her. Long time ago. I know ducks can eat slugs, but not geese. Ok, I need to do more research.
Have you done a video on how you created the river?
If yoy mean the forever that borders my property, that has been here long before I got here.
If you mean the artesian well overflow stream, here is the videos on it - keep in mind this was just at the time I decided I would make videos and post them to TH-cam. So I don't have any videos of actually digging it out.
th-cam.com/video/ErjRtUu6J2E/w-d-xo.html
make yourself some Autumn olive fruit leather you might want not want to cut it down after you try that.
hmmmm I will definitely try this. I picked so many last year, and could have picked 100x more.
This is a follow up question(ishs) to the last I asked about aerobic compost.
It makes sense that there should be tunnels, and tracks from different creatures, but if we were to oxidize all of our soils prior to planting wouldn’t a lot of the nitrogen return to the atmosphere as well as the greenhouse methane produced in decomposition?
These are my thoughts… if we turn all of our compost then wed be taking all of the carbon, nitrogen, and whatever else and throwing it in the air so that the small part that remains is viable for plants. I feel like that isn’t how creation was set up and that the success of tillage has only been for short term profits rather than long term stewardship of the earth.
Like your unturned compost pile near a swale that you showed in the last video where you planted extra seeds, the plants looked great. Wouldn’t all of the soil biology be more established if it weren’t disturbed? If the microbes aren’t established then wouldn’t the available minerals be tied up or immobilized by oxidation?
Are we serving the ground that we came from or the garden we were placed in? … that’s not an accusation, but an honest question that I ask myself
You are bang on. Long term the best method is as little disruption as possible. The turning of compost should only happen in the first month or so of soil life (good scraps starting to decompose), but in the grand scheme of things, that's such a small portion of that future soils lifetime. It is only done because food scraps in that state can go anaerobic so easily and methane is really bad to produce.
The long term should minimize disruption. The food forest soils for example are never turned and dug, ajd they actually stay quite aerobic without the disruption due to all the macroscopic life that moves in.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy you school me bro
"Put slugs on a rock in the middle of water and they won't go in the water"
This hasn't been my experience at all. I wonder if everyone puts slugs on a rock and just assume the birds eat them when they're not there later. My (aquatic, apparently) slugs in the UK don't mind slithering underwater, along the bottom, and to freedom!
Your channel is awesome dude, you're an inspiration and I'm happy how fast it's growing! Keep on keeping on mate.
Yeah, it.may not be 100%. I have my "altar" in visible range of my main chill spot of the pond. I actually get to watch the birds swoop in and grab them up.
I'm sure a few get to crawl out though. I also have TONS of birds. Hitchcock would be proud.
Leaves are definitely an issue that I deal with considering I have 3 approx 100 yr old oaks on my 1 1/2 acre parcel bordered buy a forest but in response to leaves matting and starving out oxygen. How are they being stirred up in the forest to prevent that issue?
They aren't. They smother the competition of the trees, then eventually break down.
The soils themselves, under old trees, have tremendous oxygen holding capability due to all the soil organic matter and fungal networks, so they can handle a few months of smothering in the fall before the leaves break down. The advanced forest soil and fungal networks also can break the leaves down very quickly compared to a new forest planting on what used to be grass.
Basically, a forest can handle it because it's had a thousand years to change the soil ecology. So for a new forest where the soils aren't that established , it's a good idea to shred the leaves if we can, to help speed the decomposition process.
Hey man found your channel just subscribed. I have a few questions. When prepping the ground do you put wood chips under or on top of ccardboard? And since I intend to make an apple tree guild would it be wise to use the mushrooms or animal manure? Please maybe show me the steps on repping the location for a guild.
On top for sure. I have a video specifically on that! I will link it in a separate comment, incase youtube deletes it. They don't like links in comments. Let me know if you see it.
th-cam.com/video/RGY8HLvZ00E/w-d-xo.html
Doggies!
I'm a bit confused about chop n drop vs composting in a bin - when do you do one vs the other? Can whole leaves still be composted effectively in a bin if left sufficiently long? Just curious since it is easy to shred them anyway
Thanks for the comment. This actually is worth it's own video. Stay tuned and I will make my next video on this (today and should be ready tomorrow).
Okay, check out my latest video :)
th-cam.com/video/IBz0c3YQd4M/w-d-xo.html
Easy at small scales, a ton of extra labor at larger scales (or fuel inputs, if you use a tractor). Time and natural processes are your friends, added labor is your enemy.
Very informative! Its approaching fall for me now- so should I shred my leaves, then add green plant matter then wood chips or skip the plant matter? Also, to pine needles work for blueberries?- Ive heard varying reports on how they help acidify the soil. THANKS
If you have it, add it. The more organic material you can put down, the better.
Pine needs are low ph but take forever to break down. Its a huge myth that they will acidity your soil, unless you put down 5 feet of them every year.
So when the leaves mat an area and pathogens can develop, how is that different from sheet mulching with a couple layers of cardboard?
Cardboard breaks down much faster and doesn't stay anaerobic for very long. Matted leaves can last for years.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Thanks!
For a future Q & A. My wife received a package of Atlantic Giant Pumpkins from Singapore. I saw this type of thing going around in 2020 but never came across it. She never orders seeds and neither of us would order seeds from Singapore. They do look like pumpkin seeds but it doesn't seem like a good idea to plant them. How would you handle this?
Pretty low risk with annuals. I wouldn't plant perennials like that, but pumpkins? I'd say to plant them.
I have wood chips down but I know I need to bring in compost this winter. Do I remove the wood chips or just put compost on top?
Pull the chips back, put down the compost, put the chips back on top.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy ok. That’s what I thought but my brain was telling me to clear out all the woodchips in the bed, lay compost and then put all the woodchips back. But that just didn’t sound right because I would be disturbing too much of the soil. 🫤
let stuf grow bigger before removing?
How far apart do you space the trees in your guild? For example, your apricot, autumn olive and blueberry bushes?
When I started, I put trees on 20 foot centers. Now I actually overplant, with the expectation that I may need to thin at some point, once competition picks up.
For that reason, any tree planted closer than 20 feet from a large rootstock fruit tree tends to be a lower value, cheap to obtain tree such as a serviceberry. These will be trimmed at some point to release light to the more valuable trees.
How close you plant thigs depends on how much money you want to spend. But if you can buy young trees in bulk, you can get trees for $1 to $10. Once you save seed and start trees yourself it's free. So I really like overplanting and then adjusting.
This also makes your system more resilient to a sudden tree loss from a deer or small animal, or winter death, etc. I have roughly 90% success on tree plantings (younger trees fail more, especially in -30 degree winters), and every time it happened, there was already a new tree there growing and able to take over.
To directly answer you, my blueberries are 3 feet from my apricot and 2 feet from my autumn olive. My autumn olive is roughly 5 feet from my apricot. I would have no problem putting a serviceberry (full sized tree) where the autumn Olive is, and putting that autumn olive close to the fruit trees. Especially with Nitrogen fixers, I have no problem putting a nitrogen fixing bush 1 foot from a tree, because I know the N fixer will eventually be fully sacrificed to the fruit tree (slowly over roughly 10 years).
Most nitrogen fixers cannot tolerate any shade (being pioneer plants, they evolved in full sun), and thus, even if I dont chop and drop a nitrogen fixer, it will get outcompete by any large tree with big leaves, naturally. So I definitely don't mind crowding fruit trees especially with N fixers.
But bushes and trees? I dont mind surrounding trees with bushes. Its healthier for the system to crowd it. The concern is only your access to the tree during harvest. It's an ergonomic concern only (provided you have well mulched healthy soils - they can support tremendous density plantings).
Друже, я слышал что черника и ряд других кустов растут в кислой земле, то есть рядом с хвойниками им будет хорошо. И пока только планирую высадить чернику, голубику, бруснику и клюкву у себя, и не имею такого опыта. Вопрос: как у тебя растёт черника, что показана на видео в гильдии "щелочных" растений, да и к тому же рядом с азотофиксатором?
Конечно. Мой pH почвы - 6,7. Черники хочу 4.5.
Даже рядом с моими соснами и кедрами мой pH почвы равен 6.5. Я пробовала выращивать там чернику, но листья все равно краснеют. Красные листья черники указывают на дефицит магния. Существует важный обмен катионов кальция и магния, который блокируется почвенным ph.
На данный момент я выращиваю чернику в горшках, где мне легче контролировать уровень pH. Вместо этого я сосредотачиваюсь на Haskcaps, потому что они здесь так легко растут. Это следует моей стратегии: если что-то хочет умереть, оно должно умереть. Я заменяю на то, что хочет жить.
ucanr.edu/sites/Salinity/files/247732display.png
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy , благодарю за ответ.
Hello, what camera are you using? It makes great videos! At least they are of better quality than James Prigionis...I am considering to do videos of my own Food forest and I was wondering which camera to take. Right now I only own an iphone SE. That's not the way to do it I guess.
If anybody else is reading my comment you can always share your opinions about which camera to use...it shall not be too expensive but do reasonable videos still...
Thanks, I am just using a Samsung A8 phone that my kids drop on the ground once a month.
I typically try to keep phones as long as possible (I hate waste, especially electronic waste with so many previous metals gone forever), but I may replace this phone when my contract ends and I can get a new one. My phone previous to this was an iphone 4, and before that one was an old flip phone, so you can tell how long I hold onto phones!
I'm curious about what phone I can get that will double as a great camera for my videos. If anyone has input, I also would love it.
Canadian Permaculture Legacy Thanks for this super fast answer! Maybe I‘ll try a first video with my iPhone as I also don‘t want to create unnecessary waste.
You talk a lot about your blueberries. Do you chop and drop or compost with something specific to ensure the correct soil acidity for the blueberries? I currently use a soil acidifier to try and keep my blueberries happy.
More and more I have moved away from blueberries for this reason. I don't want anything in my food forest that I have to keep adding stuff to (unless I can make it myself naturally like wood ash, compost that I make anyways and woodchips). But trying to keep blueberries going with azalea fertilizer or aluminum sulfate, etc, it's like trying to change the temperature of the world by using a space heater on your patio. Massive losses and inefficiencies and it's very temporary. For that reason I think the best way to grow blueberries when you don't have soil with pH 5 or lower is to just do them in pots. That way you can minimize how much product you use because you can control the pH of the pot a little easier than the pH of the earths soil local to the blueberry.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I have just heard of biochar this year. I am wondering if I could charge some biochar with ammonium sulfate for a longer slow release soil acidification that will not wash out as easy. My boys love blues....growing them for ourselves is a dream and they are my gardening white whale.
So would it be healthy for a tree to just have its leaves raked up around the tree and left to rot there? Is that improving the health of the tree or hurting it?
As long as the fertility (leaves) are returned to the soil, it is beneficial. As long as you aren't always raking bagging and carting them away then you are all good.
So why is it that we can chop and drop any other green stuff but when I comes to leaves it’s just too much to leave it there? Is it just the extreme thickness of the leaves?
It would happen with other things if we don't chop them into smaller bits. However greener items may have more nitrogen in them and break down faster, preventing matting.
Leaves have a lot of carbon in them, and break down (relatively to say comfrey leaves) slowly. So they have a tendency to mat out more.
The paper thin bigleaf maple leaves here like to mat up, even naturally under a big tree. They don’t stay like that for long though, the little birds come along and make a mess of them, ruffling them up and making holes in them in search of worms and the like. So I think a little big of matting is no problem. Leaves will go slimy though if you put them too deep in a high rainfall area. Often under them is still visible mycelium though so it can’t be too bad down there if you see that. If you are adding a lot of leaves somewhere where you have black pure carbon soil, you already have so much pore space that good luck smothering it if you tried. And some leaves don’t do this at all, like hawthorn leaves, which are tiny so can’t form a mat, or rhododendron leaves which will all be curled, holding air.
Sounds good. I have a feeling though that the mycelium you think are are seeing is actually actinomycetes Bacteria. An anaerobic decomposer. It might be fungus, but it sounds more likely to be actinomycetes due to the anaerobic conditions.
www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-actinomycetes-and-vs-fungi/
Interesting, thanks for the heads up. It seems really common for deep mulchers/composting folks to fear the unshredded leaf, which I think is batty. I glean about twenty pickup loads of leaves every fall from town. It would be absolutely loony, in my view, to shred all of them. Probably even if I had a nice shredder. I mulch with them, only a few inches thick, and make leaf mold and slow, no-turn compost/worm casts (because if you add manure or veggie scraps to the center of a leaf pile, you invariably start a compost worm farm, at least here in Western Oregon). They are more active in a heap like this than a bin because of the thermal mass of the big heap, and insulation of the leaves. I’m never worried about suffocating the ground because anytime I deep mulch with them, I either haven’t planted yet, or have already created fluffy black soil, which I don’t think can be smothered very easily. If one we’re worried about this, my advice is to make leaf mold from unshredded leaves a year in advance and mulch with that, just staying one season ahead with your leaf collection. It doesn’t take any extra labor or work that way...versus shredding every year.
Hi, couple questions.
I've got a garden I'm working with for/with my mum in Australia (Victoria specifically).
Firstly my mum has been putting down cardboard sheets with mulch on top following the advice of a friend. I think this is to kill weeds but this video's pretty much convinced me that we're probably screwing the soil by this method. Any advice on fixing this? At this point I'm going to be trying to chop it up a bit with a shovel.
Secondly our climate is very much based around very hot try summers and flooding rains. Do you have any thoughts about managing this? We're currently constructing a dry riverbed and I'm doing my best to look for native plants that fit this climate. But I'd love any input.
No, the method you guys are using is perfect. I even have 2 guides on it, a grass to garden guide:
th-cam.com/video/hAaHB_wqpIA/w-d-xo.html
And a sheet mulching guide:
th-cam.com/video/bjBLVSo0zeY/w-d-xo.html
Unfortunately, in order to kill the grass, you must smother it. The best way to do that will also starve O2 to the soil. But don't worry, it will recover. It is a one time thing, and not a constant practice. Once O2 gets back down to the soil (once the cardboard decomposes), the soil microbiology will revert back to aerobes and the anaerobes will die off.
I think of this like a one time double deep till. I hate tilling as a sessonal practice, but when you first start up a bed on compacted soil, a good deep till can be handy. Not needed, but also not terrible to do (compared to yearly tilling which is aweful).
For your second comment, swales, swales, swales, swales SWALES! Your situation is where swales are absolutely incredible. Capturing that large rain is so important when you won't get another for a long time.
I have many many swale guides. Check those out and ask me any questions you have.
Thank you so much for your reply!
I'm really glad I don't have to rework the cardboard. :P I think looking though your videos most of our gardens are in a stage where getting some native ground covers in is the next step. I've been looking through local nurseries.
I've rewatched you swales video and been wandering around my garden a bit. We actually have something more or less like a swale formed at one part which is great, and I've got a few other places where I'm thinking we can easy put mini-swales in. They'll actually help solve another problem we have, our house is below our garden on a slope, so I can use these to make sure the pavers don't flood up to the door again.
Question I have is can the trench of the swale be filled in and made level with some porous rocks or something similar? My mum has balance issues and I don't want to create to many small ditches.
Second question, I'm thinking of putting some small pits in filled with river-rock and native grasses near where the stairs and ramp leading down to the house is to grab excess water, again to keep the house safe. What do you think of that as an idea?
Filling swales with stuff is definitely doable, it will just reduce the volume of water it can hold. Also keep in mind that organic debris will get washed into the swale and will get trapped by the rocks. It may require a dig out/ clean out every 7 years or so. Without rocks in it, you just scrape them out and all that stuff is great soil and compost. With rocks in it, it will just be a bit of a pain.
For your second question, if I understand you correctly you are saying to dig little holes and fill them with rocks. This is kind of like a mix between a deep deepwell, a Zai, and a french drain. Essentially what this does is depress the water table around it. If the soil around it is sand, it will drain well, if it is clay, it will keep water for a while.
I would say if the goal is to keep paths clear, go full out with a path lined with a french drain. Basically instead of a hole with rocks, dig a full trench and fill it with rock. It can be fairly small, like 6 inches wide and 1 foot deep. I would do that instead, but I would bury an O-pipe (weeping tile) under the rock.
What is your reddit account?
u/Suuperdad
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