Make sure you all check out the descriptions of the videos if you want more information. Often I want to talk about a LOT more than I can in a video (without making it a 45 minute video). I try to always add a little more "bang for your buck" in the description of the video above. For example, a complete list of the plants propagated today can be found there. One other thing - I really enjoyed making the last minute of this video in particular. I'd be curious if people like the "feel" of that section. I'd like to add more stuff like that as a way to break-up the "lecture" style teaching. I think it helps "reset" people and give their minds a bit of a break. B-roll footage is one thing, but sometimes I just find it enjoyable to watch someone putter around a garden or homestead for 30 seconds to a minute. If you enjoyed that aspect of the video, and/or the section at 4:50 in this video, please let me know. Infact, I probably should have added a 30-60 second breakup in the first 4 minutes of this video - it was a bit too long maybe? I tried to jam a lot of B-roll footage in there to help break it up - I just really wanted to say all those things. I think they are all so super important. I'm hoping to add a lot more of that in the future. It's fun, and it's a nice outlet for my creative side. Teaching is fun, but sometimes I find it really fun to just look at nature and "get in the right mood".
I am loving the new mic setup. Recently discovered your channel, loving all the info (in the very relaxing way) you are sharing. Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks! It was honestly a long time coming. Now that I'm pretty sure this channel will have some legs to it, I think its only appropriate that I invest in some video and audio equipment to make the experience more enjoyable for others. This spring I also want to do more "mood movies" that aren't a whole lot of talking, but just allowing me to maybe express some artistic creativity. Nature is just so beautiful, and this really needs to come across in my videos more and more. I know there is a lot of appetite out there for those kind of videos. Just chilling, listening to nature and looking at beautiful polycultures inside living systems. I will still do the teaching style info videos, for sure, I think that's what makes this channel stand out a bit. But I don't want that to be the only thing I make. It was really fun for me to put together the last minute of this video for example. I'm going to try to add little segments like that to break up all the talking.
Basically a Disney princess wildlife sanctuary 🤣🤣🤣 YAS, there must be more of them!!! 🌱🌲🐿🌻✨💖✨🌸🐇🐠🍀☀️🌺🌑🌲🌳 that saint johns wort is pretty just with the seeds even.
Thanks, me too! It may take a few springs. For sure some stuff here will germinate, but what I'm really looking to do with this kind of action is to build a robust seed bank in the ground that just sits dormant until there is an opportunity for that plant to germinate and claim some real estate. One small action like this can actually sprout a plant a decade from today - a seed that simply bides it's time, waiting for it's moment in the sun.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy ‘a seed that simply bides its time waiting for its moment in the sun “ So poetic. So beautiful. You are also a story teller, pulling people in and helping them to see what you see. And I believe what you see is beauty, hope and earth healing in symbiosis with us. Much gratitude to you 💚
One of reasons that our food quality is so low these days is because of how seeds are stored, the best way, is of course, like nature does it. Thank you for being the first channel i have seen, that is really paying attention and doing it right.
When I started this, my wife made a crack at me and said "what are you trying to be, a Disney princess?". I laughed my ass off, because it was actually pretty much on point. I threw that reference into today's video incase she watches this one day (maybe even after I'm long gone), and I can put a smile on her face.
Watching this video is Very satisfying to the soul It’s the next best thing to being in nature or having an acreage food forest myself. Thank you for your stewardship of this planet 🌎. I do what I can to maximize my teensie inner city garden 🪴 can’t wait to see what pops up in Spring for you
Thank you so kindly. Its comments like these that make me pick up my camera now and then and spend hours editing a video together instead of just going outside and working without filming. Bless you, and thank you.
Seeing that spot that's missing mulch: don't forget that some birds need bare soil. It could be that someone created themselves a dust bath over the summer.
Wild Bees also need some bare soil to nest in. I do keep some bare soil. The problem with this place is that it's on a hill, and it's right on the downhill side of those rocks. Rainwater flowing over and clinging to the side of those rocks will then hit this soil and wash it away. If I left it like this, it could then wash out the soil supporting the rock wall, and the whole thing could actually slide if it got really bad. It's a really poor choice of a location to have bare soil. I do appreciate the comment though. A little bit of bare soil is a good thing to have. I should actually note this down and make a video on "exceptions to the rule". This would probably be #1 on that list. I put it on notepad file on my desktop. Thanks for the comment!
I've slowly added more and more annuals to the "open space" areas of the yard. It's wonderful to see little patches take off and grow over time with really little effort. This last year we did this with coneflower, gaillardia, penstemons, plus orach and bronze fennel. Now that the shrubs are filling in better (helping keep the wind down), I want to get some more soil enhancing type plants put in (dalea purpurea is first on my list). While our yard will never be super lush (usually 12" or less of rain per year), I can still have tons of really healthy native plants around and some of those are really easy to propagate once you have a good starting point.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy If everything stayed the same I'd get pretty bored. I like that I'm building a system in our front yard, which, by the way... started from basically nothing (fill dirt from leveling our plot when the house was built). I felt bad tilling a couple areas to start, but the clay needed to be broken up and it's fairly foreign compared to the typical sandy, low organic matter type soil that's everywhere else. Perhaps another couple years of heavy woodchips and my conscience will be clear :)
This is also why it is a really good idea to go out for nature walks, bring your phone and take photos of plants and ID them with a plant ID app. Look them up on "plants for a future", and maybe bring a journal and note the ones you like. Then in the winter, go collect a few thousand seeds and build your food forest for free with natures free materials. Don't let this season pass by with doing nothing of benefit for your gardens! Now is a great time to collect seed!
Love this! I'm constantly encouraging folks to focus on their groundcover layers-not just in food forests, but all landscaping or garden projects. I'm just up the road from you, too (Peterborough), so it's lovely to see stuff like this happening locally. Some of my favourite groundcover or herbaceous layer plants are Clinopodium arkansanum (wild savory), Fragaria vesca (wild strawberry), Achillea millefolium (yarrow), the Rudbeckias, and woodland/mesic sedges like Carex pensylvanica and Carex eburnea. I really want to add Sisyrinchium angustifolium (blue eyed grass) this year as well. Thanks for sharing, as always.
This is how I plant my herbaceous layer too! scattering seeds during a rain and the rain washes them down through my 1 inch thick mulch layer. Now I don’t even have to do that because they reseed themselves all over the place like weeds🤣 in San Diego California
Nice! more ideas on what to do during winter haha! Ive been couped up inside starting a remote full time job. and reading about permaculture design on my spare time :) Nice post !
I use cardboard and sawdust around small trees as technique to suppress rhizomous grasses and to reduce evaporation. If I want seeds to grow, I mix them with old chicken pen compost, scrape a channel in the sawdust with my tilted hoe and not breaking the cardboard then add the compost seed mix. I then cover it with a board and concrete blocks for about a week to stop the dogs and birds scratching in the area. I also have a collection of bottomless buckets that I use as planting ports. I find I need to actively make the soil more bacterially based (by adding chicken compost) rather than fungal based around established trees that have had sawdust or woodchips otherwise my success rate is very low.
Love the music. One question I have is when I am early in reviving some land with deep woodchipping, when does it make sense to scatter seed, and how should I be doing it? Should I wait until it has broken down a bit, move the top dry chip aside, put seed down, and then (not) re-cover it? It seems hard to balance giving the seeds enough light and air to germinate against continuing to protect and grow the soil early into the process. Any rule of thumb here would be super helpful.
The best way is to wait for it to break down a bit, but before other plants can be seen growing in it. If other plants start growing, I would recommend a few week tarp/smother first to reset whatever nature is trying to grow there.
I just received seeds of asparagus peas. It is an annual but more rampant and I think I will use it as filler under my trees. I think it would look good in your landscape and everything in the plant is edible. And it is a fabaceae 😀
Lavender is a bit of an interesting plant for this area. It's supposed to only be hardy down to Zone 5 (roughly -25C) but there are lavender fields near me. I got my lavender from them - so this may be cold hardy enough to survive. It's been -20C a few nights already and the lavender is still green - so far so good, but we have a polar vortex coming. It is certainly one of the nicer winter plants I have, ornamentally speaking. For the seed, it apparently takes them 3 months above 15C to germinate. So I likely won't see anything until well into the summer here. Maybe even fall, or even nothing until next season. Also, late in the summer is obviously a really poor time for a new baby plant to germinate, because everything else around it is already well established. So this plant in particular may be a decent option to sow indoors and get a head start on. I have a bunch of seed left on one of the plants, and I may try some indoor starts for it - just because it's so nuanced.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Aren't these small little tests a really big pleasure? I bought a small cutting perennial kale. It's growing nicely. During the video i was imagining to spread it next year in my garden. And gather other seed on walks Wow, I don't realise it really but I live in such a mind climate. The coldest night we got so far was -6 C. Good luck with the vortex!
For sure. Perennial kale puts on a TON of seed. Really good large seed. It spreads super easily, I have spread it all over my property now. (Easily for me, obviously some things grow easier in different climates, zones, etc).
One of the things I've been least successful in is getting wildflowers to grow from seed, even on areas I scatter them with no wood chips. Either birds and critters are eating all the seeds or they don't like my soil/climate and the latter doesn't seem very plausible. To actually scatter the seeds on wood chips would be an even greater exercise in futility for me. That's even more critters who can eat them before they get to the soil level and then no nitrogen or light once they get there. Maybe your wood chip layer is thinner than mine. I'm really trying to put a foot down although area, time, and evaporation is mostly preventing me from doing that. I had no idea lavender grows that easily from seed. I'll be very interested to see if they start showing up where you've seeded them.
I had the same problem. I live in so cal in the high desert and it can be very dry and hot. I pull back the chips in a line which I don’t make straight. Kind of a snake pattern, then seed and keep watered. That way the seeds are sprouting on good soil and as they come up I push the chips back closer and closer. Over the next season. OR TWO 😁, they are now reseeding themselves. Long story short, using wood chips and seeding outside, Baby them the first year then they will go like gang busters from then on. Hope that helps a little. Good luck
This could be a climate thing. We get massive snows which lead to massive spring melts. Some seeds definitely will get lost, but even if one out of every thousand seeds makes it, then I just made hundreds of plants for 10 mins of work. Definitely the better way on a "per seed" way is to save them, pull back chips and plant them. Also starting them in seed trays then transplanting. These are all good ideas. I made this video because I do want people to understand that maximizing plants per seed often is the wrong thing to maximize. Instead, forget about "per seed" and maximize plants "per hour" of your time. Also, you know best for your climate. So it something like this is truly completely 100% futile, then save seed and pull back chips and plant in soil in the spring. I have just found this method works really well here. I'm sure I will lose 99.9% of these seeds to nature or poor germination on woodchips, but what matters isn't the 99.9% i lose but the 0.1% that turn into healthy plants.
I really enjoy your videos. I am in Muskoka and the snow is almost a metre thick right now, so no seed gathering for me! Sounds like you are in zone 4 too, right?
This was a great idea never crossed my mind to do this thank you! As an occasional viewer perhaps I have missed this along the way but I wonder is it possible to grow bamboo here in Canada? I’m in eastern Ontario myself west of Ottawa and I would like to try it in a small plot on my property IF it’s feasible. Many thanks!
It is possible. I personally wouldn't recommend it, as it's VERY invasive. If you do, definitely go with clumping bamboo, as its less likely to spread. Keep in mind, I have no experience with it, I'm just really afraid of it. Someone who grows it may be able to say more.
Wood chips or bark mulch? I'm out in BC and have always used finely shredded bark mulch in the past in my flowerbeds, but with the move to a permaculture (eliminating lawn and moving to a self-sustaining food forest), I'm wondering if wood chips are a more beneficial way to go? Thanks for the great videos!!
Do you do system designs or know someone who does? I’m a part of a group who has bought over 200 acres 45 minutes west of thunder bay , and want to create a food forest, and other other permaculture systems.
I have started to do some consultation services yes, but I do work full time, and am already pretty heavily booked for next season. You can send me an email to permaculturelegacy@gmail.com and I can discuss services I can provide.
I've been dying to have things to do for the garden in the winter, maybe I'll spread some seeds. Do you have experience with or have observed strawberries growing from seed? Or do you just plant out runners as they come. I've just started to attempt to germinate some seeds, but maybe spreading some on the beds now would be a worthwhile endeavor. I live on the east coast of the US, zone 6b.
I just plant runners myself, because the plants just put out so many darn runners. But that being said, if a slug took down a strawberry or I missed one, I'll chuck the berry into an area that doesn't have strawberries then step on it, crushing it down into the woodchips. I don't save any seed and do actual plant starts with them, but rather just "plant" berries that get damaged. During strawberry season I actually save up berries in a bucket, and when I have a decent amount of them I like to go planting them in storefront gardens around my community. Who knows, maybe a few years later I'll have planted tons of strawberries that people forage from the gardens outside walmart, home depot, McDonalds, etc. (Most likely, the maintainers will pick them out thinking they are "weeds"). On a completely unrelated note, that avatar of yours is nightmare fuel.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I love that idea. One botany youtuber I watch is Joey Santore @Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, he calls it guerilla gardening. I have shredded leaf mulch myself but I'll try popping in some whole berries in there too. And get off my avatar, its the epitome of beauty lol.
Omg I love Crime Pays. I haven't watched his stuff for a while. I find I need a break now and then because they lose their humor after a while. But the first time I saw his stuff I was DYING.
We will see. The idea with this one is that it can die to the ground, I can cut the existing growth and it will regrow and fruit on 1 year old wood. Wrapping is also an option, but I wanted to try the lowest maintenance way first. A guy in town swears by it, so I figured I would try it out. His fig grows 8 feet in a single year, then dies back to the ground in our -30 to -40C winter nights.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I tried this last year. It died to the ground and there was nothing to cut. It regrew and grew figs but didn't have enough time to grow them big enough. I'm in Maryland
It's a song by Jay Someday (who watches this channel BTW!!), and it's called "closer". So I think the lady is singing "closer". I kind of liked that word because it's my goal to get people living closer and in tune with nature. The fact that writer of the song is a nature advocate and activist just makes it all the better to me.
Make sure you all check out the descriptions of the videos if you want more information. Often I want to talk about a LOT more than I can in a video (without making it a 45 minute video). I try to always add a little more "bang for your buck" in the description of the video above. For example, a complete list of the plants propagated today can be found there.
One other thing - I really enjoyed making the last minute of this video in particular. I'd be curious if people like the "feel" of that section. I'd like to add more stuff like that as a way to break-up the "lecture" style teaching. I think it helps "reset" people and give their minds a bit of a break. B-roll footage is one thing, but sometimes I just find it enjoyable to watch someone putter around a garden or homestead for 30 seconds to a minute. If you enjoyed that aspect of the video, and/or the section at 4:50 in this video, please let me know. Infact, I probably should have added a 30-60 second breakup in the first 4 minutes of this video - it was a bit too long maybe? I tried to jam a lot of B-roll footage in there to help break it up - I just really wanted to say all those things. I think they are all so super important.
I'm hoping to add a lot more of that in the future. It's fun, and it's a nice outlet for my creative side. Teaching is fun, but sometimes I find it really fun to just look at nature and "get in the right mood".
Video quality always going up, it's like watching a documentary at this point.
Haha thanks 😊 I have a long way to go. Thankfully I have a lifetime to keep getting better at this.
Agreed! Like every upload is a free mini doc, it’s fantaststic.
I am loving the new mic setup. Recently discovered your channel, loving all the info (in the very relaxing way) you are sharing. Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks! It was honestly a long time coming. Now that I'm pretty sure this channel will have some legs to it, I think its only appropriate that I invest in some video and audio equipment to make the experience more enjoyable for others.
This spring I also want to do more "mood movies" that aren't a whole lot of talking, but just allowing me to maybe express some artistic creativity. Nature is just so beautiful, and this really needs to come across in my videos more and more. I know there is a lot of appetite out there for those kind of videos. Just chilling, listening to nature and looking at beautiful polycultures inside living systems.
I will still do the teaching style info videos, for sure, I think that's what makes this channel stand out a bit. But I don't want that to be the only thing I make.
It was really fun for me to put together the last minute of this video for example. I'm going to try to add little segments like that to break up all the talking.
Basically a Disney princess wildlife sanctuary 🤣🤣🤣 YAS, there must be more of them!!! 🌱🌲🐿🌻✨💖✨🌸🐇🐠🍀☀️🌺🌑🌲🌳 that saint johns wort is pretty just with the seeds even.
I know, right?!
I am very interested to see this in the spring. It will be beautiful.
Thanks, me too! It may take a few springs. For sure some stuff here will germinate, but what I'm really looking to do with this kind of action is to build a robust seed bank in the ground that just sits dormant until there is an opportunity for that plant to germinate and claim some real estate. One small action like this can actually sprout a plant a decade from today - a seed that simply bides it's time, waiting for it's moment in the sun.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy ‘a seed that simply bides its time waiting for its moment in the sun “
So poetic. So beautiful. You are also a story teller, pulling people in and helping them to see what you see. And I believe what you see is beauty, hope and earth healing in symbiosis with us. Much gratitude to you 💚
Thank you, so kind.
We are of the same mind when it comes to this stuff. It's good to know I'm not alone.
Nice work! Even if the birds get a lot of those seeds they still may end up being deposited on your property with a little added fertilizer👍🏻
Exactly. Let the bird make little seed bombs for me.
Love the polka dotted snow!
Really nice video!
One of reasons that our food quality is so low these days is because of how seeds are stored, the best way, is of course, like nature does it. Thank you for being the first channel i have seen, that is really paying attention and doing it right.
Exactly!
The Canadian Disney princess 😂🤣 your like an updated Snow White. Hanging out in the forest with the wood land animals
When I started this, my wife made a crack at me and said "what are you trying to be, a Disney princess?". I laughed my ass off, because it was actually pretty much on point. I threw that reference into today's video incase she watches this one day (maybe even after I'm long gone), and I can put a smile on her face.
Watching this video is Very satisfying to the soul It’s the next best thing to being in nature or having an acreage food forest myself. Thank you for your stewardship of this planet 🌎. I do what I can to maximize my teensie inner city garden 🪴 can’t wait to see what pops up in Spring for you
Thank you so kindly. Its comments like these that make me pick up my camera now and then and spend hours editing a video together instead of just going outside and working without filming. Bless you, and thank you.
This is so smart!
Seeing that spot that's missing mulch: don't forget that some birds need bare soil. It could be that someone created themselves a dust bath over the summer.
Wild Bees also need some bare soil to nest in. I do keep some bare soil. The problem with this place is that it's on a hill, and it's right on the downhill side of those rocks. Rainwater flowing over and clinging to the side of those rocks will then hit this soil and wash it away. If I left it like this, it could then wash out the soil supporting the rock wall, and the whole thing could actually slide if it got really bad. It's a really poor choice of a location to have bare soil.
I do appreciate the comment though. A little bit of bare soil is a good thing to have. I should actually note this down and make a video on "exceptions to the rule". This would probably be #1 on that list.
I put it on notepad file on my desktop. Thanks for the comment!
Great idea Keith! Enjoyed the content. 😀
Can't wait to see what comes up. And i need to get on the ball with scattering my seeds, too.
Good luck!
Thanks from Ontario
I've slowly added more and more annuals to the "open space" areas of the yard. It's wonderful to see little patches take off and grow over time with really little effort. This last year we did this with coneflower, gaillardia, penstemons, plus orach and bronze fennel. Now that the shrubs are filling in better (helping keep the wind down), I want to get some more soil enhancing type plants put in (dalea purpurea is first on my list). While our yard will never be super lush (usually 12" or less of rain per year), I can still have tons of really healthy native plants around and some of those are really easy to propagate once you have a good starting point.
Also makes the gardens a little different each year, and that's always fun
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy If everything stayed the same I'd get pretty bored. I like that I'm building a system in our front yard, which, by the way... started from basically nothing (fill dirt from leveling our plot when the house was built). I felt bad tilling a couple areas to start, but the clay needed to be broken up and it's fairly foreign compared to the typical sandy, low organic matter type soil that's everywhere else. Perhaps another couple years of heavy woodchips and my conscience will be clear :)
This is such a great idea! I just bought several herbs and flowers. This will make it much easier to sow the seeds.
This is also why it is a really good idea to go out for nature walks, bring your phone and take photos of plants and ID them with a plant ID app. Look them up on "plants for a future", and maybe bring a journal and note the ones you like. Then in the winter, go collect a few thousand seeds and build your food forest for free with natures free materials.
Don't let this season pass by with doing nothing of benefit for your gardens! Now is a great time to collect seed!
Love this! I'm constantly encouraging folks to focus on their groundcover layers-not just in food forests, but all landscaping or garden projects. I'm just up the road from you, too (Peterborough), so it's lovely to see stuff like this happening locally. Some of my favourite groundcover or herbaceous layer plants are Clinopodium arkansanum (wild savory), Fragaria vesca (wild strawberry), Achillea millefolium (yarrow), the Rudbeckias, and woodland/mesic sedges like Carex pensylvanica and Carex eburnea. I really want to add Sisyrinchium angustifolium (blue eyed grass) this year as well. Thanks for sharing, as always.
Thanks for the suggestions... wild savory is especially a plant I'd like to add.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy The only local-ish place I've managed to find it is the Claremont native plant nursery in Pickering, just fyi.
This is how I plant my herbaceous layer too! scattering seeds during a rain and the rain washes them down through my 1 inch thick mulch layer. Now I don’t even have to do that because they reseed themselves all over the place like weeds🤣 in San Diego California
If it works and is easy then I'm a big fan of keeping things simple!
Inviting more nature- lovely.
Nice! more ideas on what to do during winter haha! Ive been couped up inside starting a remote full time job. and reading about permaculture design on my spare time :) Nice post !
Awesome. Man, a remote full time job sounds like such a blessing for you and your guy out there in your incredible property. Congrats!
Disney princess wildlife sanctuary....my life goal now ahah. Another great video bud!
LOL
Great video as always!
I appreciate that Ryan. Cheers mate.
I bought a whole bunch of that OSC local wildflower mix I’m planning on spreading it around as many places as possible
Nice. Nature thanks you!
I use cardboard and sawdust around small trees as technique to suppress rhizomous grasses and to reduce evaporation. If I want seeds to grow, I mix them with old chicken pen compost, scrape a channel in the sawdust with my tilted hoe and not breaking the cardboard then add the compost seed mix. I then cover it with a board and concrete blocks for about a week to stop the dogs and birds scratching in the area. I also have a collection of bottomless buckets that I use as planting ports. I find I need to actively make the soil more bacterially based (by adding chicken compost) rather than fungal based around established trees that have had sawdust or woodchips otherwise my success rate is very low.
Definitely great tips, as always.
Love the music. One question I have is when I am early in reviving some land with deep woodchipping, when does it make sense to scatter seed, and how should I be doing it? Should I wait until it has broken down a bit, move the top dry chip aside, put seed down, and then (not) re-cover it? It seems hard to balance giving the seeds enough light and air to germinate against continuing to protect and grow the soil early into the process. Any rule of thumb here would be super helpful.
The best way is to wait for it to break down a bit, but before other plants can be seen growing in it. If other plants start growing, I would recommend a few week tarp/smother first to reset whatever nature is trying to grow there.
I just received seeds of asparagus peas. It is an annual but more rampant and I think I will use it as filler under my trees. I think it would look good in your landscape and everything in the plant is edible. And it is a fabaceae 😀
Cool! Is it this?
Lotus tetragonolobus, pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Lotus+tetragonolobus
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy yes!
Im interested to see your water pump next year and how the lavender sowing worked
Lavender is a bit of an interesting plant for this area. It's supposed to only be hardy down to Zone 5 (roughly -25C) but there are lavender fields near me. I got my lavender from them - so this may be cold hardy enough to survive. It's been -20C a few nights already and the lavender is still green - so far so good, but we have a polar vortex coming. It is certainly one of the nicer winter plants I have, ornamentally speaking.
For the seed, it apparently takes them 3 months above 15C to germinate. So I likely won't see anything until well into the summer here. Maybe even fall, or even nothing until next season. Also, late in the summer is obviously a really poor time for a new baby plant to germinate, because everything else around it is already well established. So this plant in particular may be a decent option to sow indoors and get a head start on. I have a bunch of seed left on one of the plants, and I may try some indoor starts for it - just because it's so nuanced.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
Aren't these small little tests a really big pleasure?
I bought a small cutting perennial kale. It's growing nicely. During the video i was imagining to spread it next year in my garden. And gather other seed on walks
Wow, I don't realise it really but I live in such a mind climate.
The coldest night we got so far was -6 C.
Good luck with the vortex!
For sure. Perennial kale puts on a TON of seed. Really good large seed. It spreads super easily, I have spread it all over my property now. (Easily for me, obviously some things grow easier in different climates, zones, etc).
One of the things I've been least successful in is getting wildflowers to grow from seed, even on areas I scatter them with no wood chips. Either birds and critters are eating all the seeds or they don't like my soil/climate and the latter doesn't seem very plausible. To actually scatter the seeds on wood chips would be an even greater exercise in futility for me. That's even more critters who can eat them before they get to the soil level and then no nitrogen or light once they get there. Maybe your wood chip layer is thinner than mine. I'm really trying to put a foot down although area, time, and evaporation is mostly preventing me from doing that. I had no idea lavender grows that easily from seed. I'll be very interested to see if they start showing up where you've seeded them.
I had the same problem. I live in so cal in the high desert and it can be very dry and hot. I pull back the chips in a line which I don’t make straight. Kind of a snake pattern, then seed and keep watered. That way the seeds are sprouting on good soil and as they come up I push the chips back closer and closer. Over the next season. OR TWO 😁, they are now reseeding themselves. Long story short, using wood chips and seeding outside, Baby them the first year then they will go like gang busters from then on. Hope that helps a little. Good luck
This could be a climate thing. We get massive snows which lead to massive spring melts. Some seeds definitely will get lost, but even if one out of every thousand seeds makes it, then I just made hundreds of plants for 10 mins of work.
Definitely the better way on a "per seed" way is to save them, pull back chips and plant them. Also starting them in seed trays then transplanting. These are all good ideas.
I made this video because I do want people to understand that maximizing plants per seed often is the wrong thing to maximize. Instead, forget about "per seed" and maximize plants "per hour" of your time.
Also, you know best for your climate. So it something like this is truly completely 100% futile, then save seed and pull back chips and plant in soil in the spring.
I have just found this method works really well here. I'm sure I will lose 99.9% of these seeds to nature or poor germination on woodchips, but what matters isn't the 99.9% i lose but the 0.1% that turn into healthy plants.
yeah, I've had little success with wildflowers too, but i keep trying
fukokowa mud balls for seed scattering my fave method
I really enjoy your videos. I am in Muskoka and the snow is almost a metre thick right now, so no seed gathering for me!
Sounds like you are in zone 4 too, right?
Yep, Canadian zone 4, which is comparable to American zone 3.
This was a great idea never crossed my mind to do this thank you! As an occasional viewer perhaps I have missed this along the way but I wonder is it possible to grow bamboo here in Canada? I’m in eastern Ontario myself west of Ottawa and I would like to try it in a small plot on my property IF it’s feasible. Many thanks!
It is possible. I personally wouldn't recommend it, as it's VERY invasive. If you do, definitely go with clumping bamboo, as its less likely to spread.
Keep in mind, I have no experience with it, I'm just really afraid of it. Someone who grows it may be able to say more.
Wood chips or bark mulch? I'm out in BC and have always used finely shredded bark mulch in the past in my flowerbeds, but with the move to a permaculture (eliminating lawn and moving to a self-sustaining food forest), I'm wondering if wood chips are a more beneficial way to go? Thanks for the great videos!!
A mix of all types of wood is best. Bark, leaves, branches, twigs, and heartwood.
Do you do system designs or know someone who does? I’m a part of a group who has bought over 200 acres 45 minutes west of thunder bay , and want to create a food forest, and other other permaculture systems.
I have started to do some consultation services yes, but I do work full time, and am already pretty heavily booked for next season. You can send me an email to permaculturelegacy@gmail.com and I can discuss services I can provide.
I've been dying to have things to do for the garden in the winter, maybe I'll spread some seeds.
Do you have experience with or have observed strawberries growing from seed? Or do you just plant out runners as they come. I've just started to attempt to germinate some seeds, but maybe spreading some on the beds now would be a worthwhile endeavor.
I live on the east coast of the US, zone 6b.
I just plant runners myself, because the plants just put out so many darn runners. But that being said, if a slug took down a strawberry or I missed one, I'll chuck the berry into an area that doesn't have strawberries then step on it, crushing it down into the woodchips.
I don't save any seed and do actual plant starts with them, but rather just "plant" berries that get damaged. During strawberry season I actually save up berries in a bucket, and when I have a decent amount of them I like to go planting them in storefront gardens around my community. Who knows, maybe a few years later I'll have planted tons of strawberries that people forage from the gardens outside walmart, home depot, McDonalds, etc. (Most likely, the maintainers will pick them out thinking they are "weeds").
On a completely unrelated note, that avatar of yours is nightmare fuel.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I love that idea. One botany youtuber I watch is Joey Santore @Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, he calls it guerilla gardening.
I have shredded leaf mulch myself but I'll try popping in some whole berries in there too.
And get off my avatar, its the epitome of beauty lol.
Omg I love Crime Pays. I haven't watched his stuff for a while. I find I need a break now and then because they lose their humor after a while. But the first time I saw his stuff I was DYING.
Your fig survives the winter without being wrapped?
We will see. The idea with this one is that it can die to the ground, I can cut the existing growth and it will regrow and fruit on 1 year old wood.
Wrapping is also an option, but I wanted to try the lowest maintenance way first. A guy in town swears by it, so I figured I would try it out. His fig grows 8 feet in a single year, then dies back to the ground in our -30 to -40C winter nights.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I tried this last year. It died to the ground and there was nothing to cut. It regrew and grew figs but didn't have enough time to grow them big enough. I'm in Maryland
What is your theme music at the end if your videos saying about "cowshed?"
It's a song by Jay Someday (who watches this channel BTW!!), and it's called "closer". So I think the lady is singing "closer". I kind of liked that word because it's my goal to get people living closer and in tune with nature. The fact that writer of the song is a nature advocate and activist just makes it all the better to me.
What strain of Lavender did you plant? I'm in NNY zone 4a and bought a couple of types to try this spring.
Lavandula angustifolia and Lavandula x intermedia
What lowest temperature you have in winter time?
Roughly -40C
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacyI'm looking forward which varieties of peaches survive?
Re: List of propagated plants in your written intro. Conventionally, genus is capitalized and species begins with lower case letter. Next time :)
Oh, thanks. Today I learned. :)