I have been watching you when you were in California. It is so wonderful to hear that you are now in Tennessee. I am in Middle Tennessee, zone 7a. You are truly an inspiration and you have motivated me to continue to pursue my dreams. May God continue to bless and keep you.
I like to strip the leaves off my okra plants, to cover the soil for winter, but my stalks grow so massive that I used a sawzall to cut them down like trees and will use the stalks as trellis stakes for my spring peas ☺️
love the reuse and no waste in that idea. We live in sub-tropical SE Queensland, Austraia.Our climate means 365 days we can grow food in the garden. I collect fallen small gum limbs that are reasonably straight, cut them to size for stakes in the garden. Gum is a very hard wood and usually get 3-5 years use before they start to go get a bit ratty to use. No mould or rot seems to happen on them or to plants tied to them. Sadly no fall/ Autumn leaves to mulch with but happy to trade off for our mild climate. We do have enough seasonal change to grow winter veges. That's due to being elevated where we live.
The tripod you use makes your videos great, so many gardening channels you either only see their garden or you're staring up their nostrils. Being able to see you move around while you work only improves the education you get from the videos, I think focusing on getting shots of little things you do like how you cut something or how you tie something etc. is really beneficial for the viewer. You don't even have to spend time talking about it, just show it and the people who need to know will pay attention. Also please get a wide angle lense.
I used to have a garden before I trimmed trees, harvested crops and never had to go to the recycling center. everything was used to mulch, cover and compost at home. I didn't have a huge pile 70 L I have noticed improvement in my clay soil with time and a big boost in diversity with wildlife. I even toss weeds as mulch cover and had no issues with weeds.
I've been watching you for the last year or so and remember watching the episode Kevin introduced you in. I had no idea you moved to TN until this video! I want to say you have come a long way with confidence in front of the camera. Your videos continue to get better. Thank you for putting in this effort to teach others like myself in my 2nd year gardening. I'm in Middle TN. So much more excited to follow you now being in 7b!
Great video! We just learned of the JADAM gardening. I have the book! It's not the work that de-motivates us. It's the heat! We are in central Florida and it can be 80 at any time during the winter. When it's time to work in the garden, which can be year round, it can still be HOT! Quick and works well is what we are looking for.
I did Jadam for the first time last year. What I did was use a pitch fork to aerate the soil without flipping it. Then I covered the rows with home made compost and comfrey leaves, covered with landscape fabric. Let it sit over the winter. Early spring I added a 4 in layer shredded leaf mulch, added a microorganism drench, covered it again and let sit for 3 to 4 weeks before planting. The best garden in 30 plus years. Did the same this year.
Thank you so much for these videos! I’m so grateful you’ll be teaching us about the KNF inputs you use! I’m older and can’t afford to buy a lot of things for our garden. I was so excited to find out about KNF! I’ve tried to learn what I can on line, but I’m kind of confused about what’s best to use to keep things in the soil balanced. Thank you so much for taking the time to help us learn how to grow our own healthy food! Your help means so much to me!
I have planted a cover crop for the first time and it is about 2 inches already. I think I will now throw on top of it some cut grass and leaves to break down over winter.
Just got my JDAM books after watching your interviews with Mr. Cho. I don’t have my beds built yet (did a 1 time plow and putting a silage tarp on it over the winter) but I’m going to be using his techniques for my garden next spring. Thank you for putting out such great content!
I was pleasantly surprised to see you moved to East Tennessee! We're hoping to move over there next year and I'm eager to get a garden going. Thanks for all the work you put in to educate us.
Masanobu Fukuoka talked about laying cover crop and then his rice stalks to decompose. In his book One Straw Revolution he teaches about his process. We owe a lot of gratitude to Mr. Cho here at our farm. Viva JADAM!
I did almost all of this yesterday, but the Jadam technique is new to me. I cut all my stalks up and threw them in the compost bin. Next year I will try it. Thanks!
Enjoy your videos so much! I’m a San Diego native living in Vermont. Just moved to a new neighborhood with reasonable garden space. Back yard is covered with fallen leaves. Am ordering cover crop mix from New Leaf…will spread mix on ground with more leaves and hopefully wood chips from ChipDrop. Hope it works to build the soil. Next issue to address are some tall diciduous trees to prune or taken down to allow more sunlight. Slowly…slowly.
Native VTer here. Welcome! If you just leave all your leaves you’ll have a mess. I recommend you mow leaf piles & bag & bin your leaves. (Bags of leaves stored around your foundation can help insulate if you’re in an old house.) Some of those beautiful crumbly leaves can go right on your garden spot or lawn as mulch, some you save to use as your browns for your compost bins/worm farm/chicken coop. Depends where in VT you are but you most likely have heavy clay soil. You’ll need lots and lots of organic material. Chopped leaves, twigs, manure (ask your local farmer for a few wheel barrels full or raise chickens/rabbits/etc), compost. Your tree: ID it. Pine in particular can be used to make tea/medicine/salve, glue, waterproofing, firestarters.. Check your wind. (Deciduous make great windblock)
Cover crops allow photosynthesis to continue feeding the soil biology. Always keep a green root in the ground is a good practice. The cover crops can be cut in the spring and used as a mulch. Here in zone 3 we use winter rye which does not winter kill and takes off again quickly in the early wet spring.
Found you a couple weeks ago. Want to say that you are putting out some amazing content and I really like your video style. It makes me think you are the Chris Fix of homesteading.
Thank you Steven, I have been watching your tremendously informative organic content since you started in CA. It is so interesting watching the changes to your home farm. Glad to see you taking the time to show others how you prepare for winter; using all your resources, sourced mostly from your site (such a game changer far less lugging around). The holes that I dug and ripened with manure and worm casting are going to be planted out with passion fruit, tamarillo . A avocado has come up on its own from seed. I will experiment to see what happens with that. The Summer is just starting here so I must look back on your late spring/summer fruit and vegetable recent videos.
Thank you for sharing Steven. Hope you are having a great time on your new farm I was able to apply a lot of the things I've learned from your videos in this years garned and all things did great. Even till now a lot of things are still growing and flourishing. I like when you say if you don't know if is going to work, just try it. And I sure have 😊 Keep up the good work God bless you
I do the same in my homemade greenhouse I cut it small piece because my quails run all around and it works so well we feed the soil for free Here in zone 5 Quebec, the 21 February I go in the greenhouse all the leaves is wet and frozen I put a small layer of potting soil on it and I put my seeds The seeds catch the water in 2 or 3 weeks everything grow very quickly very easy only transfert for the summer garden.
Nice that's a great thing to do, but for me it's a waste of time and energy. I'll just cover whatever is left with compost before spring and plant into that everything under will finish decomposing.
I like the part where you said you've put on the work and then laid back with little to no maintenance. I understand that to get all setup it requires a lot of work, but once all is done, you just keep things going with less effort. I'll be buying my house+land next year so will look forward to apply some of the stuff you've been teaching.
going to buy some bokashi through the affiliate link. I'll definitely do the same for seeds if I don't have enough on hand for winter cover crops. thank you for continuing to put out enjoyable and useful content. this video is just what I needed to help get me motivated to prep my garden and yard for winter. I want to sow cover crop seeds anywhere that there is bare soil. Also need to think about getting some straw and/or leaves. I want to add a bunch of material to the in ground vermicompost pile in hopes that the worms might stay more active.
So Im thinking on your experimental bed there with the mulch over the cover crop, if that mulch moves at all or has openings weeds probably would have grown through the mulch. at least with a cover crop in there, the weeds will have to compete with the cover crop in those areas. I still think cover crop seeds are a great idea and you will learn some cool things too.
I am very happy that I discovered your YT channel because we live in the same 7A TN area and I am now trying to learn about gardening in this area. We just moved here this summer, from NJ, as you moved from CA, and for sure gardening here is much different. From my personal experience I noticed that the season is much longer here, which is fantastic! I have a question for you: Is it OK if we'll use the leaves from an apple which was affected by black fungus, over the garden beds?? Thank you and keep the good work!
I bought the Jadam book after watching several,of you videos. Could you possible do a video on how to make the different solutions. I’m finding it difficult to understand and the quantities seem very large for a backyard Gardner. Thanks for all you videos. Ive learned a lot
What are your thoughts about Charles Dowding or Back to Eden with Paul? I’m fairly new to gardening and do enjoy your videos but am always seemingly leaning towards their methods which just seems easier and yet more beneficial to the ground.
I actually heard someone saying recently that disease is in the soil all around us, you can't get rid of it. So burning or removing the diseased plant material is all for nothing. What dictates whether a plant gets a disease is nutrient density and the health of the plant. Anyways, I'm going to research it further but I thought it was fascinating
if you have goats some of that can be of use as well. the stalks ya bit some of that is good goat pig food. even those leaves of the pepper plant. if you got pigs you might want to make a winter slop. we gotta get out of the habit of compost compost compost or chop and drop. sometimes we should be feeding that off.
What's the difference or benefits, if any, of chop and drop over putting the material in the compost, mixing it with other resources, then applying it back over the soil?
Just so you know your cover crop WILL grow thru what you put down. It's really cool because I have done it and you will see that the cover crops actually push up the leaves into a hill. Under my leaves I had put down cut grass and that's a really matted material. Nice work overall:>}
100% agree cover crops would grow through that no problem. All your large seeded cover crops would explode through it, small seeds would take a little longer but would do just fine as well.
@Raquelia The Impatient Gardener, Did you add freshly cut grass to the bed you were covering? Just wanting to make sure there is not problems to utilizing freshly cut😃👍🏼
@@bonnied3550 Yes I did use fresh grass and fresh leaves and old grass. Sorry for the late reply I just saw your message. Let me know how you did, always looking to see what other methods gardners are using.
I just spread over 10 lbs of that same seed mix all over my beds and even in my pasture where my pigs have been doing a lot of rooting. I"m pretty sure that seed mix is already inoculated from true leaf. But, regardless adding more certainly won't hurt!
Nice! They don't say what it's inoculated with but I'd guess the legumes have rhizobia to help with nitrogen fixation. The inoculants I discussed in the video are completely different, far more diverse and increase fungal diversity (IMO), or in JMS case bacterial diversity.
I'll be curious to see how much of this matter on top of your beds has broken down by spring & how you will plant in them come spring using no dig. It's so ironic because I cut down my peppers & ground cherries & was tempted to leave plants scattered over the bed as protective mulch for winter. I had never seen anyone do that with spent plants without composting them first. So before I had seen this video I had already cleaned up the plants & composted them.
Your channel is absolutely awesome. Thank you for the content. Any recommendations on what to do about my soil beds that had a million tomato plants in them that were left hanging to rot over winter (which dropped a gazillion tomato seeds that I’m anticipating will pop up in droves once summer gets here.) I have way more than just tomatoes I want in there, and I feel like it’s going to be a nightmare. Am I wrong ? Any help would be greatly appreciated !
@@NaturesAlwaysRight is it necessary for dress cut grass to be dried before putting on a garden bed?? Can you just cut grass and put straight away on the garden whether preparing to sit for winter or utilize as a side/top dressing during the time the garden is growing ?? Thank you in advance for taking time to answer😃👍🏼
I live in zone 4 Maine and have covered my beds with leaves but much is not broken down by Spring so in some beds I am trying some wood sawdust over grounded manure on some beds and leaves on others. Have you tried that? What do you use for a summer mulch?
what did you lay around your garden beds with? We planned to go with the stones and removing top glass layer tried tiny spot and saw glass through it, so its not too effective. Whats your ideas/thoughts on what material can be used to walk around on?
I want to know what would happen if I mix Jadam organic leaves fertilizer with leave mold and mix it with the Jadam fish fertlizer with leave mold will that be the ultimate fertiizer??? Or should I not mix the two? I have so many different fruit tree leaves in my Jadam fertilizer liquid but I'm wondering if I should also add fish???? What should I do?
The channel I AM ORGANIC GARDENING came up with a really cool solution to the “cover crop through leaves/crop waste” question, which actually is very similar to the JADAM answer (if you read closely in the book and think outside the box a bit) If you layer a half inch of soil over every 2 inches of leaves/crop waste, then you can plant your cover crop in the top layer of soil. The roots of the cover crop will penetrate down through the leaves and crop waste, which allows for air and water to penetrate into that organic matter and “turn the pile” so to speak. The guy was able to make like 20” of a compost/soil mix in-place in a raised bed over one winter by doing several alternating layers of leaves (2”) and soil (1/2”) and then planting winter rye in the top layer. The end result looked like finished compost with roots penetrating all the way down to the bottom of the large raised bed. No turning required. The JADAM book says if the cover crop is not withered when you are ready to plant, till it into the top 2” of soil. So if you had too much crop residue for a cover crop but really needed to boost your organic matter to the max, you could surface-till the crop waste & leaves in the fall and then plant the cover crop into that, then surface-till the cover crop in spring if needed. Obviously surface tillage is probably not something you’re going to implement especially in your raised beds, but if someone really needed to improve a lot of barren soil as efficiently as possible, it’s a hell of a system. And in your case sprinkling an inch of compost or raised bed mix over the top of the organic matter would achieve basically the same results, or even doing alternating layers like described above.
I was able to get a ton of wood chips by calling the power company. They use tree services to trim branches near power lines. they were in my area and dumped 5 or 6 loads of wood chips. I had to tell them to stop lol
Haha nice Mike. That's a good idea I'll have to give them a call and see. My local friend told me I can get old power poles for free from them, he's using them as part of his pole barn.
@@NaturesAlwaysRight I would be careful with old phone poles, railroad ties, etc. All those wooden structural items were probably heavily treated with chemicals to prevent them from rotting while in use.
Loving watching this, as I just saw a video (ready for a flashback?) of You & Epic Gardening reviewing Your CA 1/4 Acre Market Garden😁👍🏼was so cool+throughly enjoyed all I learned about from Your setup. Now, I’m totally fascinated by the fact You’re now in AL? Obviously the videos are years apart..*smiles*..Anyways, Loving it, Can’t wait to start growing my container garden again…Thanks! Going to go follow You on IG, YT, Etc..😉👍🏼 Good Luck w/Everything & I wish You & Yours a Safe, Healthy, Happy & Fruitful 2021 Holiday Season!😁👍🏼
Hey, I'm also in TN and have access to large amounts of awesome leaves but have been hesitant about bringing them to my garden, because I'm worried I'll pick up a bunch of ticks right with them. Thoughts?
I’m in TN as well, the ticks are insane here. I just moved from Colorado and we had no ticks there, that was the BEST thing about Colorado. TN is very beautiful and hopefully will be the best move I’ve ever made. Cheers
That was my first thought too. I have an Earthwise electric chipper for stalks that size. Everything would have been chipped and no further work needed come spring. Instead his bed has a brush pile on it. ;-) Also I don't recommend that approach because it give habitat to slugs which attracts mice and voles - both nibble on beets and carrots for example. Chipping it makes it less inviting. But I don't use raised beds.
Helpful information as always! Hey, I have a question about growing okra, if anyone wants to answer. Is it a good idea to pinch back the top (when it starts to grow) so it will branch out? It seems like that would increase your yield a lot, but I've never heard anyone mention it. Thanks!
I've never seen that recommended but go ahead a try it - just not sure if you need to increase the spacing due to bushiness. My experience is that a row of okra is so much okra you can't possible keep up picking even every other day and of course it gets fibrous if overripe. I even planted a midget hybrid on a container this year and even that grew a lot of okra.
Some guys in France studied how much carbon was kept in traditionnal compost vs letting things composting to the ground. They conclude that about 70% more carbon is trapped with ground composting. Wich is either better for soil and the planet. If you understand french see "ferme des cagnoles" channel.
Somewhat off topic question, but have you ever grown Castor Bean plants? I bought a small castor bean plant at a farmers market around 7 months ago and it has grown to over 12 feet in that time off little to no input by me. It thrives on neglect. I know that its possible to farm castor beans and extract the oil which has various uses, but the seeds themselves are very toxic. The plant also produces huge leaves and branches and I would love to compost all that free plant material. I have heard yes and no as far as composting the plant material. Some say it is too toxic to work with the plant material. I have also heard that the seeds it produces (which is a huge amount) are very viable and can be easily replanted. So one could grow a large amount of castor bean plants with very little effort or inputs. just curious if you have ever grown them.
I've never grown them, very interesting on their vigorous growth I'll have to look up the minerals they mine maybe would be good for an FPJ. Castor oil is a great oil for many medicinal reasons. Ricin is the toxic chemical from it and can kill you but has been shown to have health effects in small doses but you can research that, not making any medical claims here haha.
I'm not much on gardening. Something's I can grow such as leaf lettuce, cucumber, radish, squash, tomatoes so so , okra. The rest starts getting complicated me anyway I'm Tennessee also mid state. I'm retired 63 chicken barn just almost finished four months project. It's the small stuff that slow you down on a project .I'm fithteen miles from town .I'm so happy got it almost done I'm gonna cover it in tin easiest part . It's planked out solid makes cooler in summer on the yard birds. I've always been afavorite for game hen's not so much the roosters. They lay a small egg but they get broody. Predators have a hard time catching them running loose. But I got the bigger breeds as well Easter eggers, road island reds ,white rocks and such. Lots of poop for your beds. I'm no vegatarain not big meat eater tho. I have no need to raise beef ,pork not really fond of either. Ducks, chickens I probably want kill a chicken ten pounds of chicken quarters six bucks. I am gonna raise rabbits to eat. I fish catch ever thing eat . Put five bags of catfish felays in the freezer today half gallon size. Live alone so no need to plan for company . I have a daughter but she don't visit. I hear from her about every two months. Life's a bitch you find out after marrying one. Happy holidays to everyone
I'm also in 7a and just sowed garlic Cloves in my no dig raised bed. I'm having a hard time finding hay with no seeds and was curious if this was absolutely needed or if I should try using fallen leaves as a soil cover after sowing?
This is an example of what I talked about in the video not wasting time and energy. Before spring I will cut the cover crop lay it down then cover with compost and the microbes will decompose the rest adding more nutrients and I plant into the compost.
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I have been watching you when you were in California. It is so wonderful to hear that you are now in Tennessee. I am in Middle Tennessee, zone 7a. You are truly an inspiration and you have motivated me to continue to pursue my dreams. May God continue to bless and keep you.
Thank you so much Angela, God bless you too!
Hey fellow Middle TN friend! 🤗 have you got local honey? I would totally buy some if your homestead has bees! 🐝🐝🐝
@@bygraceonly182 No not yet. Beekeeping is something I hope to start next year, God’s willing. It’s so kind of you to ask. Take care and God bless.
I like to strip the leaves off my okra plants, to cover the soil for winter, but my stalks grow so massive that I used a sawzall to cut them down like trees and will use the stalks as trellis stakes for my spring peas ☺️
Stalks for trellis I love that idea!
That's a pretty good idea, I burn them for potassium, I've occasionally found branches and used them for peas
love the reuse and no waste in that idea. We live in sub-tropical SE Queensland, Austraia.Our climate means 365 days we can grow food in the garden. I collect fallen small gum limbs that are reasonably straight, cut them to size for stakes in the garden. Gum is a very hard wood and usually get 3-5 years use before they start to go get a bit ratty to use. No mould or rot seems to happen on them or to plants tied to them. Sadly no fall/ Autumn leaves to mulch with but happy to trade off for our mild climate. We do have enough seasonal change to grow winter veges. That's due to being elevated where we live.
The tripod you use makes your videos great, so many gardening channels you either only see their garden or you're staring up their nostrils. Being able to see you move around while you work only improves the education you get from the videos, I think focusing on getting shots of little things you do like how you cut something or how you tie something etc. is really beneficial for the viewer. You don't even have to spend time talking about it, just show it and the people who need to know will pay attention. Also please get a wide angle lense.
I used to have a garden before I trimmed trees, harvested crops and never had to go to the recycling center. everything was used to mulch, cover and compost at home. I didn't have a huge pile 70 L
I have noticed improvement in my clay soil with time and a big boost in diversity with wildlife. I even toss weeds as mulch cover and had no issues with weeds.
I've been watching you for the last year or so and remember watching the episode Kevin introduced you in. I had no idea you moved to TN until this video!
I want to say you have come a long way with confidence in front of the camera. Your videos continue to get better. Thank you for putting in this effort to teach others like myself in my 2nd year gardening. I'm in Middle TN. So much more excited to follow you now being in 7b!
Great video! We just learned of the JADAM gardening. I have the book! It's not the work that de-motivates us. It's the heat! We are in central Florida and it can be 80 at any time during the winter. When it's time to work in the garden, which can be year round, it can still be HOT! Quick and works well is what we are looking for.
I did Jadam for the first time last year. What I did was use a pitch fork to aerate the soil without flipping it. Then I covered the rows with home made compost and comfrey leaves, covered with landscape fabric. Let it sit over the winter. Early spring I added a 4 in layer shredded leaf mulch, added a microorganism drench, covered it again and let sit for 3 to 4 weeks before planting. The best garden in 30 plus years. Did the same this year.
Thank you so much for these videos! I’m so grateful you’ll be teaching us about the KNF inputs you use! I’m older and can’t afford to buy a lot of things for our garden. I was so excited to find out about KNF! I’ve tried to learn what I can on line, but I’m kind of confused about what’s best to use to keep things in the soil balanced. Thank you so much for taking the time to help us learn how to grow our own healthy food! Your help means so much to me!
I have planted a cover crop for the first time and it is about 2 inches already. I think I will now throw on top of it some cut grass and leaves to break down over winter.
Yes I had a huge fennel plant growing wild. I pruned it down n used it for mulch. Hopefully it'll grow back even bigger🙏
Algorithm blessed me with this as im prepping the beds for winter right now
I always appreciate your free gift of KNF Jadam books 👍👍👍
Just got my JDAM books after watching your interviews with Mr. Cho. I don’t have my beds built yet (did a 1 time plow and putting a silage tarp on it over the winter) but I’m going to be using his techniques for my garden next spring. Thank you for putting out such great content!
I was pleasantly surprised to see you moved to East Tennessee! We're hoping to move over there next year and I'm eager to get a garden going. Thanks for all the work you put in to educate us.
Masanobu Fukuoka talked about laying cover crop and then his rice stalks to decompose. In his book One Straw Revolution he teaches about his process. We owe a lot of gratitude to Mr. Cho here at our farm. Viva JADAM!
One of my fav books!
Love the video man! Full of great tips 👏🏻👏🏻
Thanks man!
I did almost all of this yesterday, but the Jadam technique is new to me. I cut all my stalks up and threw them in the compost bin. Next year I will try it. Thanks!
If you have dry winters, you can leave some stalks standing to help catch snow.
The method you use I’ve been doing for 8 years and it works a treat year on year 😎👍
Enjoy your videos so much! I’m a San Diego native living in Vermont. Just moved to a new neighborhood with reasonable garden space. Back yard is covered with fallen leaves. Am ordering cover crop mix from New Leaf…will spread mix on ground with more leaves and hopefully wood chips from ChipDrop. Hope it works to build the soil. Next issue to address are some tall diciduous trees to prune or taken down to allow more sunlight.
Slowly…slowly.
Native VTer here. Welcome!
If you just leave all your leaves you’ll have a mess.
I recommend you mow leaf piles & bag & bin your leaves.
(Bags of leaves stored around your foundation can help insulate if you’re in an old house.)
Some of those beautiful crumbly leaves can go right on your garden spot or lawn as mulch, some you save to use as your browns for your compost bins/worm farm/chicken coop.
Depends where in VT you are but you most likely have heavy clay soil.
You’ll need lots and lots of organic material. Chopped leaves, twigs, manure (ask your local farmer for a few wheel barrels full or raise chickens/rabbits/etc), compost.
Your tree: ID it. Pine in particular can be used to make tea/medicine/salve, glue, waterproofing, firestarters..
Check your wind. (Deciduous make great windblock)
Facultative microbes. Learn something new every day. TY
Cover crops allow photosynthesis to continue feeding the soil biology. Always keep a green root in the ground is a good practice. The cover crops can be cut in the spring and used as a mulch. Here in zone 3 we use winter rye which does not winter kill and takes off again quickly in the early wet spring.
Great info! For smaller gardens like his what would you use the rye for after it grows in spring?? Thanks, from Nova Scotia
@@spoolsandbobbins mulch or just compost it.
Found you a couple weeks ago. Want to say that you are putting out some amazing content and I really like your video style. It makes me think you are the Chris Fix of homesteading.
Thanks Dylan!
Thank you Steven, I have been watching your tremendously informative organic content since you started in CA. It is so interesting watching the changes to your home farm. Glad to see you taking the time to show others how you prepare for winter; using all your resources, sourced mostly from your site (such a game changer far less lugging around). The holes that I dug and ripened with manure and worm casting are going to be planted out with passion fruit, tamarillo . A avocado has come up on its own from seed. I will experiment to see what happens with that. The Summer is just starting here so I must look back on your late spring/summer fruit and vegetable recent videos.
Thank you for sharing Steven.
Hope you are having a great time on your new farm
I was able to apply a lot of the things I've learned from your videos in this years garned and all things did great. Even till now a lot of things are still growing and flourishing. I like when you say if you don't know if is going to work, just try it. And I sure have 😊
Keep up the good work
God bless you
I just found your channel this morning!!! I'm so excited.
I do the same in my homemade greenhouse I cut it small piece because my quails run all around and it works so well we feed the soil for free
Here in zone 5 Quebec, the 21 February I go in the greenhouse all the leaves is wet and frozen I put a small layer of potting soil on it and I put my seeds
The seeds catch the water in 2 or 3 weeks everything grow very quickly very easy only transfert for the summer garden.
I have a small electric chipper that I use to shred up my left over woody material.
Nice that's a great thing to do, but for me it's a waste of time and energy. I'll just cover whatever is left with compost before spring and plant into that everything under will finish decomposing.
I like the part where you said you've put on the work and then laid back with little to no maintenance. I understand that to get all setup it requires a lot of work, but once all is done, you just keep things going with less effort. I'll be buying my house+land next year so will look forward to apply some of the stuff you've been teaching.
going to buy some bokashi through the affiliate link. I'll definitely do the same for seeds if I don't have enough on hand for winter cover crops. thank you for continuing to put out enjoyable and useful content. this video is just what I needed to help get me motivated to prep my garden and yard for winter. I want to sow cover crop seeds anywhere that there is bare soil. Also need to think about getting some straw and/or leaves. I want to add a bunch of material to the in ground vermicompost pile in hopes that the worms might stay more active.
My pleasure Brian glad the video was helpful for you. Adding carbon in the form of mulch is super helpful to the soil and a long term feed source.
So Im thinking on your experimental bed there with the mulch over the cover crop, if that mulch moves at all or has openings weeds probably would have grown through the mulch. at least with a cover crop in there, the weeds will have to compete with the cover crop in those areas. I still think cover crop seeds are a great idea and you will learn some cool things too.
Could you please show detailed method of building the garden raised bed? Thanks for your videos🌼
Yeahhh!!! Way to be a proponent of garden experimentation!!
I am very happy that I discovered your YT channel because we live in the same 7A TN area and I am now trying to learn about gardening in this area. We just moved here this summer, from NJ, as you moved from CA, and for sure gardening here is much different. From my personal experience I noticed that the season is much longer here, which is fantastic! I have a question for you: Is it OK if we'll use the leaves from an apple which was affected by black fungus, over the garden beds?? Thank you and keep the good work!
I have been using pine needles that have dropped for mulch in my garden beds- looks a lot like straw. 😊
Another excellent free mulch choice!
I bought the Jadam book after watching several,of you videos. Could you possible do a video on how to make the different solutions. I’m finding it difficult to understand and the quantities seem very large for a backyard Gardner.
Thanks for all you videos. Ive learned a lot
What are your thoughts about Charles Dowding or Back to Eden with Paul? I’m fairly new to gardening and do enjoy your videos but am always seemingly leaning towards their methods which just seems easier and yet more beneficial to the ground.
Love to see the result.:) we do the same cover crop, but we find we are dealing with slugs eating up my 🌱.
Thank you so much ..... all the way from South Africa!
It seems counter productive to seed a cover crop and then mulch somewhat heavily. 🙂
It was an experiment and it worked very well. Maximizing nutrients and water retention
I actually heard someone saying recently that disease is in the soil all around us, you can't get rid of it. So burning or removing the diseased plant material is all for nothing. What dictates whether a plant gets a disease is nutrient density and the health of the plant. Anyways, I'm going to research it further but I thought it was fascinating
Stay growing, you rock. 🤘🤘🤘🤘
I like my Corona pruner that I bought this year, I was having problems finding a good one before
Try chipdrop to get free wood mulch. It was an amazing addition to help fill my raised beds this year.
if you have goats some of that can be of use as well. the stalks ya bit some of that is good goat pig food. even those leaves of the pepper plant. if you got pigs you might want to make a winter slop. we gotta get out of the habit of compost compost compost or chop and drop. sometimes we should be feeding that off.
Thanks for your kind sharing, it's valuable method.
What's the difference or benefits, if any, of chop and drop over putting the material in the compost, mixing it with other resources, then applying it back over the soil?
Would you mind talking about the pros and cons of using cover crops vs just a multch?
Just so you know your cover crop WILL grow thru what you put down. It's really cool because I have done it and you will see that the cover crops actually push up the leaves into a hill. Under my leaves I had put down cut grass and that's a really matted material. Nice work overall:>}
100% agree cover crops would grow through that no problem. All your large seeded cover crops would explode through it, small seeds would take a little longer but would do just fine as well.
@Raquelia The Impatient Gardener, Did you add freshly cut grass to the bed you were covering? Just wanting to make sure there is not problems to utilizing freshly cut😃👍🏼
@@bonnied3550 Yes fresh cut grass and they grew right through it ,the cover crops also grew through chopped up leaves and whole leaves...lol
@@bonnied3550 Yes I did use fresh grass and fresh leaves and old grass. Sorry for the late reply I just saw your message. Let me know how you did, always looking to see what other methods gardners are using.
I just spread over 10 lbs of that same seed mix all over my beds and even in my pasture where my pigs have been doing a lot of rooting. I"m pretty sure that seed mix is already inoculated from true leaf. But, regardless adding more certainly won't hurt!
Nice! They don't say what it's inoculated with but I'd guess the legumes have rhizobia to help with nitrogen fixation. The inoculants I discussed in the video are completely different, far more diverse and increase fungal diversity (IMO), or in JMS case bacterial diversity.
I'll be curious to see how much of this matter on top of your beds has broken down by spring & how you will plant in them come spring using no dig. It's so ironic because I cut down my peppers & ground cherries & was tempted to leave plants scattered over the bed as protective mulch for winter. I had never seen anyone do that with spent plants without composting them first. So before I had seen this video I had already cleaned up the plants & composted them.
Charles dowding in United kingdom use no dig gardening methods too.
I love chop and drop. I make hugel beds with debris after summer season.
Your channel is absolutely awesome. Thank you for the content.
Any recommendations on what to do about my soil beds that had a million tomato plants in them that were left hanging to rot over winter (which dropped a gazillion tomato seeds that I’m anticipating will pop up in droves once summer gets here.)
I have way more than just tomatoes I want in there, and I feel like it’s going to be a nightmare.
Am I wrong ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated !
Found your channel today and subscribed, I need a pruner holster like yours.
No, extending with a poly tunnel?
I mow my grass, then cure and dry it like hay for a couple days. It's terrific free mulch.
Great idea!
@@NaturesAlwaysRight is it necessary for dress cut grass to be dried before putting on a garden bed?? Can you just cut grass and put straight away on the garden whether preparing to sit for winter or utilize as a side/top dressing during the time the garden is growing ?? Thank you in advance for taking time to answer😃👍🏼
I beat the big stalks with a hammer, true they are not completely broken down, but the nutrients are in your soil
I live in zone 4 Maine and have covered my beds with leaves but much is not broken down by Spring so in some beds I am trying some wood sawdust over grounded manure on some beds and leaves on others. Have you tried that? What do you use for a summer mulch?
If it doesn't break down just push aside plant transplants use same leaves as much through summer
what did you lay around your garden beds with? We planned to go with the stones and removing top glass layer tried tiny spot and saw glass through it, so its not too effective. Whats your ideas/thoughts on what material can be used to walk around on?
I want to know what would happen if I mix Jadam organic leaves fertilizer with leave mold and mix it with the Jadam fish fertlizer with leave mold will that be the ultimate fertiizer??? Or should I not mix the two? I have so many different fruit tree leaves in my Jadam fertilizer liquid but I'm wondering if I should also add fish???? What should I do?
Did you build the metal raised beds or was it pre manufactured and do you crop rotate?
The channel I AM ORGANIC GARDENING came up with a really cool solution to the “cover crop through leaves/crop waste” question, which actually is very similar to the JADAM answer (if you read closely in the book and think outside the box a bit)
If you layer a half inch of soil over every 2 inches of leaves/crop waste, then you can plant your cover crop in the top layer of soil. The roots of the cover crop will penetrate down through the leaves and crop waste, which allows for air and water to penetrate into that organic matter and “turn the pile” so to speak.
The guy was able to make like 20” of a compost/soil mix in-place in a raised bed over one winter by doing several alternating layers of leaves (2”) and soil (1/2”) and then planting winter rye in the top layer. The end result looked like finished compost with roots penetrating all the way down to the bottom of the large raised bed. No turning required.
The JADAM book says if the cover crop is not withered when you are ready to plant, till it into the top 2” of soil. So if you had too much crop residue for a cover crop but really needed to boost your organic matter to the max, you could surface-till the crop waste & leaves in the fall and then plant the cover crop into that, then surface-till the cover crop in spring if needed.
Obviously surface tillage is probably not something you’re going to implement especially in your raised beds, but if someone really needed to improve a lot of barren soil as efficiently as possible, it’s a hell of a system. And in your case sprinkling an inch of compost or raised bed mix over the top of the organic matter would achieve basically the same results, or even doing alternating layers like described above.
I looked but I can't find the video where this is explained. Do you remember which video it is?
Hey buddy nice work but isn’t it more space efficient to take all the residues and compost them then add them back to the beds as compost?
I'm displaying a method that can be used in the garden.You choose what you want to do based on your context.
Think of the effort you save not hauling all that away just to compost it and haul back thr compost in the spring 👍👍
How did this experiment go? Could you give us an update?
Omg! I always learn so much from you!!!
I was able to get a ton of wood chips by calling the power company. They use tree services to trim branches near power lines. they were in my area and dumped 5 or 6 loads of wood chips. I had to tell them to stop lol
Haha nice Mike. That's a good idea I'll have to give them a call and see. My local friend told me I can get old power poles for free from them, he's using them as part of his pole barn.
@@NaturesAlwaysRight I would be careful with old phone poles, railroad ties, etc. All those wooden structural items were probably heavily treated with chemicals to prevent them from rotting while in use.
Would like to see you make the JMS!
I guess I've been using no-dig and jadam for years now without knowing it, nice, just was being lazy
Loving watching this, as I just saw a video (ready for a flashback?) of You & Epic Gardening reviewing Your CA 1/4 Acre Market Garden😁👍🏼was so cool+throughly enjoyed all I learned about from Your setup. Now, I’m totally fascinated by the fact You’re now in AL? Obviously the videos are years apart..*smiles*..Anyways, Loving it, Can’t wait to start growing my container garden again…Thanks! Going to go follow You on IG, YT, Etc..😉👍🏼 Good Luck w/Everything & I wish You & Yours a Safe, Healthy, Happy & Fruitful 2021 Holiday Season!😁👍🏼
Hey, I'm also in TN and have access to large amounts of awesome leaves but have been hesitant about bringing them to my garden, because I'm worried I'll pick up a bunch of ticks right with them. Thoughts?
There's no ticks this time of year and we got our first freeze already.
I’m in TN as well, the ticks are insane here. I just moved from Colorado and we had no ticks there, that was the BEST thing about Colorado. TN is very beautiful and hopefully will be the best move I’ve ever made. Cheers
Ducks and Chickens
I like your raid bed, where can I find your video to make it?
How do you handle tree roots in no dig garden ?
I hate that youtube doesn't show release dates for videos anymore.
Well done! Thank you 🙏 😊
Good stuff! Thanks for sharing.
Would it be a good idea to run all that through a chipper? Or would that cause it to decompose too fast and raise the soil temps too much?
That was my first thought too. I have an Earthwise electric chipper for stalks that size. Everything would have been chipped and no further work needed come spring. Instead his bed has a brush pile on it. ;-) Also I don't recommend that approach because it give habitat to slugs which attracts mice and voles - both nibble on beets and carrots for example. Chipping it makes it less inviting. But I don't use raised beds.
Helpful information as always! Hey, I have a question about growing okra, if anyone wants to answer. Is it a good idea to pinch back the top (when it starts to grow) so it will branch out? It seems like that would increase your yield a lot, but I've never heard anyone mention it. Thanks!
I've never seen that recommended but go ahead a try it - just not sure if you need to increase the spacing due to bushiness. My experience is that a row of okra is so much okra you can't possible keep up picking even every other day and of course it gets fibrous if overripe. I even planted a midget hybrid on a container this year and even that grew a lot of okra.
My garden is large and fenced, I put my leaves 2 to,3 feet deep over the garden every autumn. By the next autumn the previous years mulch is gone.
did the cover crop go thru the mulch?
Thank you very much for sharing
Some guys in France studied how much carbon was kept in traditionnal compost vs letting things composting to the ground. They conclude that about 70% more carbon is trapped with ground composting. Wich is either better for soil and the planet. If you understand french see "ferme des cagnoles" channel.
Great video
Is the innoculant listed? Thanks
Somewhat off topic question, but have you ever grown Castor Bean plants? I bought a small castor bean plant at a farmers market around 7 months ago and it has grown to over 12 feet in that time off little to no input by me. It thrives on neglect. I know that its possible to farm castor beans and extract the oil which has various uses, but the seeds themselves are very toxic. The plant also produces huge leaves and branches and I would love to compost all that free plant material. I have heard yes and no as far as composting the plant material. Some say it is too toxic to work with the plant material. I have also heard that the seeds it produces (which is a huge amount) are very viable and can be easily replanted. So one could grow a large amount of castor bean plants with very little effort or inputs. just curious if you have ever grown them.
I've never grown them, very interesting on their vigorous growth I'll have to look up the minerals they mine maybe would be good for an FPJ. Castor oil is a great oil for many medicinal reasons. Ricin is the toxic chemical from it and can kill you but has been shown to have health effects in small doses but you can research that, not making any medical claims here haha.
Great video 🙏
Where can I buy the seed for that specific Okra variety? I'm zone 8B...Okra generally doesn't so well here due to the short season.
This is the one, Okra - bit.ly/3Ee2v9l
What about throwing some plastic over the viable plants?
why not run the dense stuff through a wood chipper
I'm not much on gardening. Something's I can grow such as leaf lettuce, cucumber, radish, squash, tomatoes so so , okra. The rest starts getting complicated me anyway I'm Tennessee also mid state. I'm retired 63 chicken barn just almost finished four months project. It's the small stuff that slow you down on a project .I'm fithteen miles from town .I'm so happy got it almost done I'm gonna cover it in tin easiest part . It's planked out solid makes cooler in summer on the yard birds. I've always been afavorite for game hen's not so much the roosters. They lay a small egg but they get broody. Predators have a hard time catching them running loose. But I got the bigger breeds as well Easter eggers, road island reds ,white rocks and such. Lots of poop for your beds. I'm no vegatarain not big meat eater tho. I have no need to raise beef ,pork not really fond of either. Ducks, chickens I probably want kill a chicken ten pounds of chicken quarters six bucks. I am gonna raise rabbits to eat. I fish catch ever thing eat . Put five bags of catfish felays in the freezer today half gallon size. Live alone so no need to plan for company . I have a daughter but she don't visit. I hear from her about every two months. Life's a bitch you find out after marrying one. Happy holidays to everyone
I'm also in 7a and just sowed garlic Cloves in my no dig raised bed. I'm having a hard time finding hay with no seeds and was curious if this was absolutely needed or if I should try using fallen leaves as a soil cover after sowing?
I watched other videos and a lot of people use fallen leaves for mulch, am thinking of adding some more on my Garlic and strawberry this weekend also
All hay has seeds, look for straw. Fallen leaves are the perfect mulch.
I have septoriose in my soil and i lose my garden , it’s come from to my worm bin 😢
If you had a garden shredder could you not run all this material through it and make a much easier to work with and quicker decaying mulch.
This is an example of what I talked about in the video not wasting time and energy. Before spring I will cut the cover crop lay it down then cover with compost and the microbes will decompose the rest adding more nutrients and I plant into the compost.
I have a shredder I use on pine needles. Then I mix that with grass and shred it again. My compost smells like driving through the mountains.
very good come in india uttrakhand
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What does"zone 7a" mean?
Check this out planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
I looked for a follow up video, I’m guessing it didn’t work.
Next time you need some raised beds, contact me!