Thanks for doing real experiments! I would love to garden in real soil, in ground, but those days are gone. I love the waist high beds that allow me to keep gardening at age 81 with a wonky hip.
I put branches that fell down in our spring wind storms and bunny litter in soft wood pellets as our base. Compost on top. Tomatoes are beautiful despite the big hail storm in early summer.
Interesting! I got a raised bed this year and I put cardboard in the bottom, then rotten wood from the woods, then compost and other duff from the woods, (I live in the woods) then native soil, then mulch also from the woods. I might be a cheapskate. The leeks I planted in it are super happy and can't wait to see how it performs next year. Thinking of growing hot peppers next spring.
I ran a test growing lawn seed under a grow light in two small boxes (at the same time)... one with 100% fertilized soil vs the other wirh 100% mushroom compost, both purchased from a big box store. After 10 days, there was good germination in the fertilized soil, as expected. It was over a month before there was any germination in the 100% mushroom compost. So, I use mushroom compost sparingly now, more like a soil amendment, and not a growing medium. Your comments on the variables impacting compost makes perfect sense.
My home built raised beds 42” tall are all done Hugleculture style I used old punky logs cut to 36” and then split to quarters and I interlocked it and used Not mature compost and Rabbit bedding ontop of the wood and I went 24” the top is ProMix /wormcastings,compost, rice hulls some vermiculite and some perlite the beds have been in use 3 years now and have improved every year , I also watered the beds as filling them all the way up so I had saturation of the soil compost peat moss mix the wood is now holding more water like a spunge
I mixed some limited chicken poo ‘infused’ compost on my beds last winter and then covered them with black ground cover. I opened the beds up just before planting. It’s been a great growing season this year.
Well, this video is very timely for me!! I just got three new garden beds, two (8ft x4 ft x2 ft) and one (6 ft x3 ft x2 ft,) so it's wood and shredded cardboard into those beds. I am using soil that came out of my pallet beds. The pallet ones had to go since the rats and wasps were squatters!!
It depends on the weather!! The weather has just dropped here like a light switch and is still very wet. I hope to get some things in that will grow in early spring, but it's a lot of work!!!
Ive been watching Y-T vids about raised (off ground) wicking beds. Originally, I was interested, but then I considered our short and relatively cool growing temps in Saskatchewan. Wick beds seem more popular in hot and dry climes in southern states, where they would likely fill the reservoirs several times during the growing season.
Limited experience but I filled half full of small twigs and rotting wood (prefer) toppings 50 /50 garden and winter mulch.I prefer this as a fall prepping bed.. Believe I'll put cover crop radishes in this week and hopefully improve the bed Thanks
My woodchip garden mounds are doing really well. Wood is almost all broken down after one year. Just made sure to water them well until mushrooms started growing through the soil on top
@@GardeningInCanada yeah they went through an arborist wood chipper. Largest size like 2". I also put worms with a little bit of compost for easy food into the wood and topped it with soil.
We’re in Southern Alberta, have been doing wood & soil in our large mineral tubs for 3 years and this year has been an over abundance of the most perfect tomatoes. Did fertilize with a miracle-gro granular tomato blend once but will not do it again, saw a difference in affect. I don’t understand granular enough I guess so will be going back to their liquid which I have personal confidence in. Thank you for this comparison. Cheers
Interested in thoughts on making a blend of shredded cardboard, soil, and compost with possibly a layer of wood at the bottom? Seems to me this would reduce stratification of "problem" layers where there would be nitrogen lock-up or excessive water retention. What percentage of each would use?
I have a raspberry raised bed built out of old rotting railroad ties and i filled it with mulch that had been sitting and composting for 6+ month. I think i used like 2-3 bags of soil but thats it. Honestly i probably did need the soil at all lol. The raspberries took off like crazy
What do you think about using passive solar heat to keep the soil warm during the shoulder seasons? 1" poly tubing along the bottom of a new bed connected to a poly tube gridwork outside the bed.
Thank you for saying that if you have nitrogen lockout due to wood in the mix it is easily worked around by just adding a little more nitrogen. I hear a lot of gardeners in YT videos say a lot of things like they are being very careful not to mix any wood chip mulch into the soil at all for fears of nitrogen lockout. Some will be raking a thin layer of less than an inch of wood chip mulch aside carefully getting every chunk aside. C'mon. I mean really, it's not a big deal. We get free wood chip at my local refuse transfer station by the truckload here in town for free, and it makes up our largest compost pile input by far. We layer it with garden greens and kitchen waste as we build the piles, but they are mostly wood chip, and some of the chunks are very large, like 2 inches thick or more. After a year in the pile, the outside layer of the big chunks is soft, but still have lots of solid wood in the middle... it all goes straight into our 30-inch tall raised beds and we plant into it immediately. After a year in the pile the compost has cooled down. After 2 to 3 years of growing veggies in the high wood chip content in the beds, when we dig into them to plant a large transplant we find that the big chunks have broken down to a nice fine mix. All we do is watch the plants in our garden for yellowing leaves, and if any plants start to look like they are lacking in nitrogen (doesn't always happen, but does on occasion) then if it does happen, we just add some fish emulsion and the plants green right up. Nitrogen lockout really isn't nearly as big a deal as most YT gardeners would have you believe. And I appreciate your straight talk about it.
I built some raised beds too. I put a few handfuls of 10/10/10 on top of the wood I placed on the bottom. I was hoping to prevent nitrogen lock. Seemed to work. The tomatoes did fine. Thoughts?
So, my initial thought to use a mix of stuff (shredded cardboard, old leaf and straw mulch, and various grades of soil might actually be a good idea 🤷🏼♀️ I’m thinking of adding a raised bed in one section of my semi-raised community plot, mostly for visual interest, and had wondered what was the best alternative to all soil was.
Interesting and useful info as usual. Do you recommend using cardboard to kill grass? I tried that and some sort of mold grew in the mulch and I almost collapsed when I was planting my new cottage garden bed the next year. (I am moderately allergic to my garden, and grass but that was an excessive reaction.) I had to call my handyman to clean up the area and plant for me.
Cardboard works well for me but if it’s causing issues like that I would recommend not using cardboard anywhere you plan to see the soil again. So if it’s buried it shouldn’t affect you but if you’re gonna be digging around an area maybe use something less agitating? I grow sunflowers and pumpkins for biomass/decoration each year
Wondering about throwing in all the annuals and their pot soil from this year to a combo of wood and cardboard? Thoughts? Shredded paper? Is printer ink a problem?
So would mixing mulch made from branches and logs with some potting soil and MANURE and putting that in the bottom half of the container make sense? I hope so, cause that’s what I’m doin. I’m thinkin’ I can let this decompose over the fall, winter and early spring.
You got him to fill the beds with a skid steer ?? Seriously ?? How spoiled is THAT ? I had to run the soil and compost for 10 raised garden beds and a 10x12 ft in ground bed from the driveway, across the front of the house, down the side, and then to various spots in the back yard, ALL in a wheelbarrow !!!! I'm not saying you weren't smarter....I'm just jealous. :)
If you put a short piece of pvc drainpipe through the cardboard so the soil above could drain, that would prevent waterlogged soil. I would think the cardboard would absorb water as well and be a solid block of ice in the spring that might take all summer to thaw.
I gasped in distress when I say the words “poplar cuttings”! Unless you want a poplar farm, that is definitely not something to use. But I guess you know that now. :)
Would the results change if you grew carrots instead of tomatoes? Especially in the compost filled raised bed? I know people usually grow carrots in ground instead of raised beds but my sister grew carrots in freshly soil filled raised bed and produced the longest ever carrots, probably because the soil was so fluffy and it was so easy for the root to develop in it... In the beginning of the season she had low rain and the germination rate wasn't great but the end result was great.
So much scientific information she provides of confounding variables on so many things, but this one you question - I think it's safe to assume when she says "the other factor" of "3 years old" [3:10] (what she thinking as actually important), and "as things begin to rot" [2:25] (so it's not rotted) and a even had a picture! at [1:34] (showing the planks' types of wood and different sizes like twigs). So I think she covered your questions fairly well, and all other variables would be converted by how fast nature rots down that particular type, which she doesn't need to re-cover as you could just look it up
My best ever additive to soil is the well-broken down old trees that have been crumbling in the woods, untouched by humanity. It’s like a sponge and absorbs water, releasing it when the plants need it. It has to have good plant nutrients too, I’m guessing, as every time I add significant quantities of small chunks of this to my soil mix or straight into the garden beds, the plants do the best ever. It keeps the soil less compacted, more aerated, moist for longer, but not muddy. It seems like the ideal thing. It’s like free vermiculite that’s better than vermiculite. 😄
Buried wood gives us mushrooms here on the coast, and fairy ring fungus when it is under our turf. This is in acidic conditions. Does your alkaline soil doing something different?
If I fill up some of the raised beds now in Autumn with compost that is not 100% decomposed, will that still produce too much heat for seeds in the Spring? I live in Switzerland at about 450m
I always thought that the “locked up nitrogen” from wood was a myth. I’ve never seen a conclusive study on it, and I’ve only ever seen it work in practice. In any case, most gardening beds are overloaded with nutrients anyways, so the wood might help actually reduces the access to nitrogen in a beneficial way. Seems like an obvious choice
Ur lighting is crazy! I have tons of plants that het shade all the time and they arent at all leggy like urs lol Canadian sunlight is so weak no offense lol
The tomato planting thing has been debunked many times now. Buring it stunts the plant because it has to focus on roots. Epic gardening did a good video recently on it
Thanks for doing real experiments! I would love to garden in real soil, in ground, but those days are gone. I love the waist high beds that allow me to keep gardening at age 81 with a wonky hip.
That is completely fair!
I put branches that fell down in our spring wind storms and bunny litter in soft wood pellets as our base. Compost on top. Tomatoes are beautiful despite the big hail storm in early summer.
Interesting! I got a raised bed this year and I put cardboard in the bottom, then rotten wood from the woods, then compost and other duff from the woods, (I live in the woods) then native soil, then mulch also from the woods. I might be a cheapskate. The leeks I planted in it are super happy and can't wait to see how it performs next year. Thinking of growing hot peppers next spring.
Interesting!! Love that. My peppers always fail if I have them in ground
I ran a test growing lawn seed under a grow light in two small boxes (at the same time)... one with 100% fertilized soil vs the other wirh 100% mushroom compost, both purchased from a big box store. After 10 days, there was good germination in the fertilized soil, as expected. It was over a month before there was any germination in the 100% mushroom compost. So, I use mushroom compost sparingly now, more like a soil amendment, and not a growing medium. Your comments on the variables impacting compost makes perfect sense.
My home built raised beds 42” tall are all done Hugleculture style I used old punky logs cut to 36” and then split to quarters and I interlocked it and used Not mature compost and Rabbit bedding ontop of the wood and I went 24” the top is ProMix /wormcastings,compost, rice hulls some vermiculite and some perlite the beds have been in use 3 years now and have improved every year , I also watered the beds as filling them all the way up so I had saturation of the soil compost peat moss mix the wood is now holding more water like a spunge
Thank you for doing real experiments!
Glad you like them!
I love that Uproar Zinnia. My zinnias of that colour won 1st prize at the Kinmount Fair, 😢.
Oh wow!
I mixed some limited chicken poo ‘infused’ compost on my beds last winter and then covered them with black ground cover. I opened the beds up just before planting. It’s been a great growing season this year.
Well, this video is very timely for me!! I just got three new garden beds, two (8ft x4 ft x2 ft) and one (6 ft x3 ft x2 ft,) so it's wood and shredded cardboard into those beds. I am using soil that came out of my pallet beds. The pallet ones had to go since the rats and wasps were squatters!!
Oooooooo fun! Are you planning to do anything this fall for them?
It depends on the weather!! The weather has just dropped here like a light switch and is still very wet. I hope to get some things in that will grow in early spring, but it's a lot of work!!!
Ive been watching Y-T vids about raised (off ground) wicking beds. Originally, I was interested, but then I considered our short and relatively cool growing temps in Saskatchewan. Wick beds seem more popular in hot and dry climes in southern states, where they would likely fill the reservoirs several times during the growing season.
Get a piece of rebar or something and drive it down through the cardboard to allow drainage.
Oooo that’s a good idea
Limited experience but I filled half full of small twigs and rotting wood (prefer) toppings 50 /50 garden and winter mulch.I prefer this as a fall prepping bed.. Believe I'll put cover crop radishes in this week and hopefully improve the bed
Thanks
I have been Solarizing the beds in the spring and I add 1/2” to 3/4” of compost
Oh yes! Favourite
Such a great video, really cool experiment to run and appreciate you doing it for the GiCs 😀Loved the shot of filling the bed with heavy machinery!
🙏 work smarter not harder right !
Love the fullness of your garden Ashley!
Have you ever tried burying a straw bale for core gardening like Luke at MiGardener does?
Sooo I did once years and years ago…. And I ended up with a bunch of mice 😂😂😂. I have refused to try it again.
My woodchip garden mounds are doing really well. Wood is almost all broken down after one year. Just made sure to water them well until mushrooms started growing through the soil on top
Were the chips pretty small?
@@GardeningInCanada yeah they went through an arborist wood chipper. Largest size like 2". I also put worms with a little bit of compost for easy food into the wood and topped it with soil.
VERY interesting experiment! Thanks from Cape Breton!
Glad you enjoyed it!
We’re in Southern Alberta, have been doing wood & soil in our large mineral tubs for 3 years and this year has been an over abundance of the most perfect tomatoes. Did fertilize with a miracle-gro granular tomato blend once but will not do it again, saw a difference in affect. I don’t understand granular enough I guess so will be going back to their liquid which I have personal confidence in. Thank you for this comparison. Cheers
Interested in thoughts on making a blend of shredded cardboard, soil, and compost with possibly a layer of wood at the bottom? Seems to me this would reduce stratification of "problem" layers where there would be nitrogen lock-up or excessive water retention. What percentage of each would use?
I have a raspberry raised bed built out of old rotting railroad ties and i filled it with mulch that had been sitting and composting for 6+ month. I think i used like 2-3 bags of soil but thats it. Honestly i probably did need the soil at all lol. The raspberries took off like crazy
What do you think about using passive solar heat to keep the soil warm during the shoulder seasons?
1" poly tubing along the bottom of a new bed connected to a poly tube gridwork outside the bed.
Fantastic experiment! Thank you!!!!
very interesting, very fun!
Thank you! Cheers!
Thank you for saying that if you have nitrogen lockout due to wood in the mix it is easily worked around by just adding a little more nitrogen. I hear a lot of gardeners in YT videos say a lot of things like they are being very careful not to mix any wood chip mulch into the soil at all for fears of nitrogen lockout. Some will be raking a thin layer of less than an inch of wood chip mulch aside carefully getting every chunk aside. C'mon. I mean really, it's not a big deal. We get free wood chip at my local refuse transfer station by the truckload here in town for free, and it makes up our largest compost pile input by far. We layer it with garden greens and kitchen waste as we build the piles, but they are mostly wood chip, and some of the chunks are very large, like 2 inches thick or more. After a year in the pile, the outside layer of the big chunks is soft, but still have lots of solid wood in the middle... it all goes straight into our 30-inch tall raised beds and we plant into it immediately. After a year in the pile the compost has cooled down. After 2 to 3 years of growing veggies in the high wood chip content in the beds, when we dig into them to plant a large transplant we find that the big chunks have broken down to a nice fine mix. All we do is watch the plants in our garden for yellowing leaves, and if any plants start to look like they are lacking in nitrogen (doesn't always happen, but does on occasion) then if it does happen, we just add some fish emulsion and the plants green right up. Nitrogen lockout really isn't nearly as big a deal as most YT gardeners would have you believe. And I appreciate your straight talk about it.
I built some raised beds too. I put a few handfuls of 10/10/10 on top of the wood I placed on the bottom. I was hoping to prevent nitrogen lock. Seemed to work. The tomatoes did fine. Thoughts?
So, my initial thought to use a mix of stuff (shredded cardboard, old leaf and straw mulch, and various grades of soil might actually be a good idea 🤷🏼♀️
I’m thinking of adding a raised bed in one section of my semi-raised community plot, mostly for visual interest, and had wondered what was the best alternative to all soil was.
Great point! Sounds like a good idea to me!
Interesting and useful info as usual. Do you recommend using cardboard to kill grass? I tried that and some sort of mold grew in the mulch and I almost collapsed when I was planting my new cottage garden bed the next year. (I am moderately allergic to my garden, and grass but that was an excessive reaction.) I had to call my handyman to clean up the area and plant for me.
Cardboard works well for me but if it’s causing issues like that I would recommend not using cardboard anywhere you plan to see the soil again. So if it’s buried it shouldn’t affect you but if you’re gonna be digging around an area maybe use something less agitating? I grow sunflowers and pumpkins for biomass/decoration each year
I used cardboard base on all my front lawn gardens. Would really nicely
Wondering about throwing in all the annuals and their pot soil from this year to a combo of wood and cardboard? Thoughts? Shredded paper? Is printer ink a problem?
I wonder if a mix of slightly smaller wood and torn cardboard would have worked better than either?
That definitely would be something to try
So would mixing mulch made from branches and logs with some potting soil and MANURE and putting that in the bottom half of the container make sense? I hope so, cause that’s what I’m doin. I’m thinkin’ I can let this decompose over the fall, winter and early spring.
You got him to fill the beds with a skid steer ?? Seriously ?? How spoiled is THAT ? I had to run the soil and compost for 10 raised garden beds and a 10x12 ft in ground bed from the driveway, across the front of the house, down the side, and then to various spots in the back yard, ALL in a wheelbarrow !!!! I'm not saying you weren't smarter....I'm just jealous. :)
LOL I hand filled five or so before that and then he felt bad 😂
Interesting. Thanks. I hope to mske another bed in my smallvp space. I am curious with your nitrogen concerns -- would wood + compost solve this?
It could if it’s compost really well
If you put a short piece of pvc drainpipe through the cardboard so the soil above could drain, that would prevent waterlogged soil. I would think the cardboard would absorb water as well and be a solid block of ice in the spring that might take all summer to thaw.
awesome as usual 👍 i once put small poplar cuttings in a raised bed....not good. i had suckers growing for the next two seasons.
I gasped in distress when I say the words “poplar cuttings”! Unless you want a poplar farm, that is definitely not something to use. But I guess you know that now. :)
@@Mrs.LadeyBug yup
I wonder how well wood chips would do...
Would the results change if you grew carrots instead of tomatoes? Especially in the compost filled raised bed? I know people usually grow carrots in ground instead of raised beds but my sister grew carrots in freshly soil filled raised bed and produced the longest ever carrots, probably because the soil was so fluffy and it was so easy for the root to develop in it... In the beginning of the season she had low rain and the germination rate wasn't great but the end result was great.
100% would. My hypothesis would be the compost bed would come out king.
But what kind of wood did you use? Rotted at all? Filling twigs in the hollow spots would change things? Rotten logs with fungi? So many variables!
I am not scientific at all but I use all variables with success so far lol
So much scientific information she provides of confounding variables on so many things, but this one you question - I think it's safe to assume when she says "the other factor" of "3 years old" [3:10] (what she thinking as actually important), and "as things begin to rot" [2:25] (so it's not rotted) and a even had a picture! at [1:34] (showing the planks' types of wood and different sizes like twigs).
So I think she covered your questions fairly well, and all other variables would be converted by how fast nature rots down that particular type, which she doesn't need to re-cover as you could just look it up
My best ever additive to soil is the well-broken down old trees that have been crumbling in the woods, untouched by humanity. It’s like a sponge and absorbs water, releasing it when the plants need it. It has to have good plant nutrients too, I’m guessing, as every time I add significant quantities of small chunks of this to my soil mix or straight into the garden beds, the plants do the best ever. It keeps the soil less compacted, more aerated, moist for longer, but not muddy. It seems like the ideal thing. It’s like free vermiculite that’s better than vermiculite. 😄
@@Mrs.LadeyBug how do we get that tho? Seems rare for everyone to build a garden with
Mine were actually old untreated lumber that were rotting from some beds I built a couple years ago.
Buried wood gives us mushrooms here on the coast, and fairy ring fungus when it is under our turf.
This is in acidic conditions.
Does your alkaline soil doing something different?
So I am thinking wood with a layer of compost over it would be the best to give the wood a nitrogen boost. Yes, no?
Oh yea that’s an awesome idea!
Would you combine the wood and compost to offset each other’s downsides and keep the upsides?
what about filling it in w dirt/earth from the area..
Absolutely could! So long as it’s not a heavy landscaping clay that you sometimes find in city lots
If I fill up some of the raised beds now in Autumn with compost that is not 100% decomposed, will that still produce too much heat for seeds in the Spring? I live in Switzerland at about 450m
"loam" that you buy is usually what has been dug out of someone's basement level home build.
Shouldn’t be if it’s good quality. The definition for a loam is pretty set in stone.
Aw man i just clicked on the beauty school of dirt.
🥹
Soil test?!?
I always thought that the “locked up nitrogen” from wood was a myth. I’ve never seen a conclusive study on it, and I’ve only ever seen it work in practice. In any case, most gardening beds are overloaded with nutrients anyways, so the wood might help actually reduces the access to nitrogen in a beneficial way. Seems like an obvious choice
Ur lighting is crazy! I have tons of plants that het shade all the time and they arent at all leggy like urs lol Canadian sunlight is so weak no offense lol
Sooo weak lol zero offence taken 😂
Or use huglekulture
💚💚
It's odd these yt 'garden specialists' have never heard of huglekulture
The tomato planting thing has been debunked many times now.
Buring it stunts the plant because it has to focus on roots.
Epic gardening did a good video recently on it
Yea I did a video on this ages ago
Yeah, Ashley did a more comprehensive video with sources from actual studies before Epic did theirs.