I've been binging your channel and I'm really grateful you kept your whole shift from till to no till. Seeing how you are thinking through things has been very helpful to my mental digestion of the content.
The article as promised www.notillgrowers.com/blog/2019/4/18/downsides-to-the-deep-mulch-compost-system-in-our-context ALSO, we have tried ducks. We love ducks and their is a good market for their eggs. And they do eat slugs but they also eat greens (despite popular belief to the contrary) and clobber literally every young start in our garden. Again, we have tried it. We likewise can’t have them pooping on salad greens. And as a certified organic farm, any raw manure added to the garden (like fresh duck manure) must be added 120 days before harvesting lettuce. In the off season, sure. In the growing season, ducks are in our experience not a great solution.
Helpful post. I've stumbled down this same no-till path for many years. Poor compost, slugs, chips in the produce, and nutrient analysis with phosphorus levels off the charts. Now I cover crop in the fall with oats, use organic alfalfa pellets and dress beds with less than 1/4" of compost (heavy silt soils). After 20 years I still can't grow a decent carrot. Still lots to learn.
Thanks for the content. A hobbyist gardener here. I do light tilling ( 7 inches ) to open up the soil so it can receive water , otherwise you have surface runoff. As for slugs , i use lots of coffee grounds tilled in the soil. That helps.
@@notillgrowers I run mine through my push mower, into my bagger. The main problem is that my bagger isn't very big, and I'm constantly having to empty it. Other than that, I have very few problems, in my garden. Greetings from the motherland of Kentucky!
This was two years ago already, but. This year was my first year going bigger than an 8x4'. I did cardboard. Then alternated mushroom soil/mulch, And a regular wood mulch, to separate rows from walking paths, just as you did. However, I mounded my rows, and dug a ditch at the top. I filled that in with a potting mix it mixed up myself(coco, peat, perlite...kind of costly to start. 40/40/20 to 45/45/10%. When transplanting starts, I threw a couple beads of triple phosphate in the hole and set the roots right on top. A little azo for flavor. I mulched around the bases with rice hulls. In later rows, I quit spreading the potting mix across the whole top and just made a whole bigger than needed when transplanting and backfilled with it. I did add some amendments as well as some compost teas. The results lead to Stewpendous Growth. Which then became the name of our 'StewTube' channel. We just share our backyard gardening experience, taste tests. I hope anything I have shared will help. If you see anything I did that im doing that will hurt me, let me know. I have also started composting to replace amending as much or at all, depending.
I have actually tried this! The wood chips just get washed out before the fungi can take hold. I do have one spot like that that seems promising, but I had to keep it covered for a month and inoculated with king stropharia. But it’s holding okay and we’re getting mushrooms!
I deeply appreciate you addressing pros and cons. I am happy that I have a simple urban backyard Permaculture configuration. Even then, your tips can be extrapolated from microcosm to my circumstance. Very helpful. Thanks so much!
I had a 13 inch rainfall the night after I layed my compost and rowed up the garden. The walkways filled in a little but I actually lost no compost or soil. I expected to find the entire garden in the neighbors ditch but none of it washed out.. Compost/mulch covering the soil saved my ass and my garden.
Rough Draft Farmstead its an urban plot, no slope. But I have two canals within a quarter mile so water does drain off usually. I live outside of Houston so rain can be horrendous. Harvey finished that year off. 4 feet off water with a strong current flowing through my garden for hours. No soil loss. Im actually planting those beds this year. Compositing/mulching the beds saved my dirt. Compost never left the bed. My walkways didn't even fill in :) 4ft of water! It works. Love the content! Love the videos!
@@arguspanoptes6241 you have very little slope and water movement was slow , so it did not disrupt the compost. Its the speed of water flow that decides what stays and what washes off.
Precious video. One really needs to understand what kind of downsides we should expect when trying new ideas. (I'm a bit new to this concept.) Thank you and greetings from Portugal.
I alternate top dressing with compost and leaf humus (fully broken down leaves I get at a local mulch place). The leaves add a lot of OM but very little NPK. It’s also easy to sprinkle down some lime if you’re worried about acidity. Carrots germ much better for me in leaf mulch. I’ve also decided that Sluggo is a must for me in lettuce plantings.
I'm sure there are echoes of this in the comments already, but... That compost is VERY mulchy. If it was actually composted, they need to run it a bit longer. My compost doesn't get great solar gain, so I have to run it longer. But it comes out great. I hear you on the labor of moving that stuff by wheel barrow. Ugh. Great content. Headed to your website to get more info.
Thank you for the realistic video. No till definitely should not be thought of as "less work", you are spot on. I think it is almost easier to garden in a tilled environment with all the mechanical tools you can use. I still prefer a no till for how much kinder it is to nature but I haven't had the blessing of less work that some have had. And honestly, it might be that I am doing it wrong too. Your operations looks fantastic. Super impressed! Thanks for the video.
I love the deep mulch concept. I use it in my veg gardens and definitely could've done it better had I known more initially. But live and learn. I first learned it via Paul of Back to Eden Gardening. I noticed you did rows of mulch where he has it laid out over his whole garden area...may help with erosion issues although not 100%. What I did learn the hard way is to pull the mulch back and plant in the soil. Then as the plant grows, cover the ground underneath the leaves around the stem with the mulch. This helps with the germination and moisture retention. May help with the mineral content available to roots as well since they're in the soil receiving compost tea instead of straight compost. Some of these just thoughts...some experience. You're way ahead of me so take what I say with a grain of salt. Btw I did enjoy the Karl Hammer podcast. That man is a compost genius...lol. He did seem to address the initial till with compost to enrich the current soil...something you pondered before this video...just interesting to see topics coming together. Keep it up man. Knew viewer and subscriber 👍
I found slugs get attracted to marigolds like crazy, too.... If you plant some marigolds, they may spare your main crops. Works for my small garden. (but i hav to manually kill them on the marigold, or the plant get eaten entirely within a week.)
I find that your mulch works best in my food forest. The no till garden had black plastic on the growing area until April when we picked up organic horse compost manure and hay broken down for up to a year. That is spread over the rows a few inches deep. Then wood mulch is placed in walkways and around plants high enough, etc. Any added fertilizer is in the form of cleanings from the chicken yard where we throw organic waste from kitchen, orchard harvest, or garden clean up. I appreciate this post and may change the direction of the rows to prevent erosion. Thanks!
Main problem l can see with your compost is the size of the particles. Too big as top soil and too small as a mulch. You can,t grow directly into it,so no roots to hold it in place,and too much flow between particles,so they get caught by wind and water and rushed away. I had this problem in my área,windy and dry for the main part of the year,and a few days of heavy rain on early spring and early fall. Fixed it by adding loads of composted mix of coffe grounds and shreded cardboard. It holds perfectly in place no matter how strong the wind is,and it is able to suck in and hold the same volume of water as the volume of compost is. On top,ir keeps fresh during the summer hit and warm during winter. Easy for a garden,not so easy for a farm,l know,but,as someone says,you can change the world one yard at a time. And time is all you need to completely change this situation. Hope this is usefull for you and others. Greetings from Spain.
Slugs are attracted to the mycelium in the woodchips. When we start a new bed, we always need to broadfork it. We have heavy clay soil. No way around it, unless we want to wait years (if not decades) to put them in. And we don't. Then we treat them as no-till.
Epic Gardening has a video on this. In summary, a no-till bed needs to be tilled on creation, and THEN never again. You have to prepare the ground: Loosening the base soil, maybe modify with sand (for clay) or clay (for sandy soil). Add different composts in thick layers: Plant compost, manure compost, throw on some bone/horn chips to offset the nitrogen deficiency from still intact plant fibres that use it up while decomposing. Till all that together, to mix it and homogenize the structure. Water generously to compact it. Add mulch: Half-rotten wood chips. Grass cuttings. Straw. Hay. Plant matter. Do NOT mix it in! If you didn‘t see ANY worms during all this, maybe order some compost worms online to kickstart your soil. Also, no-till is a misnomer. You still want to gently mix in your fertilizers so they stay where they are needed during watering. You basically drop your fertilizers on the ground and then just scratch up the surface.
I do love your honesty in showing both positive and negative outcomes. Your willingness to experiment is what I enjoy the most.... grab a beer, we got an extra bed, f$
I realy enjoy your videos. They are very informative for me,a new gardener. I doubt that I will ever be completely no till or organic because of my advanced age but I learn from almost every video you show. Thanks. Havagudun bud.
I tried the beer traps. First night I had dozens of drowned slugs. Second night the raccoons discovered free beer. In some drunken rumble they destroyed half a row of greens by digging for the spilt beer. This happened every time I used organic based fertilizer. Bone meal, fish, chicken manure. Must have driven them crazy trying to dig it all up. There was even a fox digging up my rows, thinking there was a dead animal buried there. Good luck friend.
I was trying to figure out why the soil was so "light and fluffy". Then I saw your website. Deep Compost Mulch system :) Lesson learned thanks so much for posting
I have had slug problems in the past and used diatramatris earth, just sprinkle it all over the paths and beds seemed to help alot and i used food grade so if it was on the plants such as lettuce it is not a problem.
I have been testing 3 different compost that I can get close by to build some deep compost beds. All of them have the germination problem that you speak of. I found that by adding peat moss to the top 2 inches of the bed it helped in retaining the moisture needed. All so I saw you on another farmers post who was dealing with compost problems and he blended in half leaf mold to retain moisture better. For sure you need to do something if placing it down deep.
We're harvesting compost from the chicken pens, so that works for the nitrogen. The important part people ignore is that with the right fungal mat, your clay and rocks become your fertilizer....this is all part of the soil science, that your enzymatic action in the soil will break up clay and rock, making all of those nutrients bio-available to the plants.
Slugo works great against slugs. chilated iron is active ingredient I've seen it omri listed Very effective and safe Pellets can generate little fungal spots, only an issue under lettuce heads
@@insidethegardenwall22 Slugs like a real wet environment like straw. Mushroom compost, or any compost for that matter holds moisture good but not like the straw.
I really enjoy watching your channel. I am starting out with no farming experience with the exception on my condo second floor balcony and walkway. I remember my grandparents having a garden and in fact when we was children my dad would sometimes grow a few rows. So Iv had all of the big city life I can take; Iv acquired 4.5 aces 100 miles south of Dallas. I have planned this for 20 years so I want to get some things right. What would be the first things you would do to make a garden.
Best time to collect slugs is just after dark with a flash light. Then you will see that there are way more of every size than you even imagined. They hide under leaves, pot or wood and come out at night. Paper sack & a salt shaker. Walk thru picking them up throwing them in the paper sack salting them before the crawl out. Then I put sack on the burn barrel when done. Do it a couple times in the spring and you will remove hundreds of slugs in a short amount of time.
bed width of Charles is 1.20m ie 4 feet, his compost is a better quality: brown and fatty not a quick dark and woody that you have, this make all the difference, then he waters regularly his bed. Compost quality is very important, if you want to stabilize your bad quality compost, you've got to mix it with top soil, but this is not no dig anymore! I've selected a better quality compost that is 8 times more expensive than the standard quick black woody and dry one. Charles' compost is near quality of a wormcast compost not a quick industrial green waste. Try to find a supplier of quality compost that is decomposed by worms or mushrooms not a quick bacterial one. Secondly, you have to let the root of veg when you harvest, i gess your soil is compacted so you can restructure your soil with daikon radish you let rot during winter and other green manures like sorgo or rye or maize. Charles started from a prairie he covered, he let the root network to decompose so rain can drain easily.
Compost quality is a big deal. It is hard for us and many in our area to get anything good, so some amount of supplement or at least improvisation is required, but I would love to see what the difference would be. And as you said, his beds are essentially 4X8 so covering that in nice compost does not come with the expense it would for us at 30”X100’. We always leave the roots in after harvest, even on baby greens.
@@notillgrowers Would it be possible to get ahead on your compost order, ie order one year's worth a year ahead of time, and give it time to compost further into a finer consistency? I suppose to do on such a large scale would either take equipment to turn it or a fair amount of labor. Unless you went a couple years in advance and opted for anaerobic/slow composting. Though would still need space/stalls/tarps to house it, perhaps requiring several smaller piles worth of space as opposed to the whole order's worth in one pile for proper decomp. Just brain fartin out loud here. Good day to you.
I live by the coast and have horrible slug problems. I successfully cured my garden of slugs by covering my soil around the base of the plants with diatomaceous earth (DE). It's cheep and super effective. The only way to get rid of slugs is to create an unsuitable environment for them. They love no till because of all the excess moisture held in the compost; which is fine, they are part of the big picture, but we can prevent them from harming our crops with small amounts of DE applications around the base of our plants. The slugs wont commit suicide by crossing the DE barrier, they just stay in the soil and break down the things you want them to and not the things we want to keep for ourselves.
My family had a pair of ducks (Polly and Wally) when I was kid in the 70s in the PNW. My mom would loan them out to neighbors to deal with their slugs as well.
Have you heard the podcast? Several people doing this on 3+ acres--singing frogs, Four Winds Farm, etc.. Worth looking at some drop spreaders, too. These could open it up to even larger scale.
I am wondering if permanent paths for the water could be useful with using gravel to the obvious places the water wants to flow. Also I do think you want to till in the first round of compost at least that is what I gathered from listening to John Kempf furthermore on the same point tilling is not tilling when you are tilling in a large amount of organic matter, it's just not the same as tilling the ground with no compost.
A few vids you'd done...you mentioned the footpaths becoming eroded. I understand the wood hip not working out so won't mention more about it. Consider using cut green material...I'm saying use unseeded grasses ... unground stuff. The wood chips will float away but straight-fibred long stems will be morecrigid...less moveable. Try one idle n see. Blessup
Read up on coffee grounds. Good to repel snails and probably slugs. Coffee grounds is also a fertilizer ; 6 pounds per 100 square feet. It can also be used as a repellent for mosquitoes when burt dry in a contaner. Also use in yard for bug repellent like fleas. Also my honey bees loves old coffee grounds. It is supposed to help with memory for them. I've collected two 55 gallon drums of used coffee grounds. I will be using it in my garden this year. Who would have guessed this. I just happen to run into this information.
I think you have moved off this property already but as long as you have a wooded area much like the wind brake you have in the background you'll always have a steady stream of slugs. Slugs also love to multiply in tall grassy fields. I have woods behind the property and I have an intense population of slugs and moles. No matter how many I remove from the property there are more taking their place. They eat my garden to the ground. If I had the ability I'd get 4 to 6 ducks to help out and garden with me but I can't do that.
i have been doing no till for about 20 years. I am tired of trying to build rows, carry compost, straw and suck. I think I will go back to in groun growing and till between the rows... Too old to do so much carrying
In my opinion the main reason you're having erosion is not because of the mulch/no till, it's because you have nothing in the trails you're walking. . On a slope that walk way turns into a gutter and water is going to flow down it hard. During a hard rain the mulch is like a sponge but if there's nothing there it's going to wash bad. The Mulch will also wash away if it's not thick enough during hard down pours.
Good R&D! Sitting here "quarterback gardening" watching your video, I see alot of carbon in your mulch covering. It seems you need to figure out your Carbon:Nitrogem balance for your plants and microbiome.
How many years have you done no-till? I am not doing commercial gardening however, slugs were bad for the first few yrs in my garden but not so much anymore. Been no-till for 6-7 yrs. I think it also could depend on the condition each yr. Some wetter than others.
Egg shells and wood ash will take care of slugs, they cannot tolerate the rough surface of the material. Also this fertilizes the soil, eggshells provide calcium!
The solution to the problems is using indian way of ploughing with bulls using very less energy on earth surface which doesn't damage the microbes that much compared to tractor ploughing
Or just water and even feed those patches... Yes its true I feed and water the ground at times... I take the 'Feed the Earth' approach... A bit literal at times... Feed the parts Of the Mother Earth under your feet... I used to work for a old farm lady who waters everything, everything... Her whole peice of Earth... She called it her way of 'Staying True to Form' concerning Biodynamic Principals of Farming And Gardening...... She was totally serious and was brilliant...
I've seen a market garden in England that does no till who does not mulch often. It seems the compost acts as a mulch in some climates and topography. But I'm in central Florida and it gets way too hot and the sun is too strong on the summer for me to not mulch
We did a deep compost mulch the first year and I found that the moisture retention was actually worse than the native soil (OM is less than 1%). The compost organic matter was around 50%. So I don't know why that happened but it did. Now what I do to the deep compost beds is just soil test them and find what they are missing. We found that they were deficient in nitrogen, sulfur, manganese, magnesium, zinc, copper, cobalt, molybdenum, and boron. That tells me that compost isn't always created very well and the materials used for the compost could be deficient in those trace nutrients. Since adding those trace nutrients in, our crops are thriving. They are growing like jungle trees. It is amazing. I think the deep compost method can work as long as it is tested with extensive soil tests and is balanced with the mineral components.
That’s great to hear. I was planning on doing a “when all you can get is mediocre compost” video soon (title undecided). may use that anecdote if that’s cool
I believe he is referring to a compost that has been "hot completed". A well made compost heap will generate quite a lot of heat that cooks any weed seeds and roots. I think about 50 C should do the job...
Is deep mulch another way of saying no dig? Meaning compost is anually dumped over the beds? If so, or I guess regardless, why did you not choose to do a cover cropping method of no till and then adding beneficial and predatory things like insects and nematodes as needed or even if needed
Ducks love to eat slugs. Duck eggs and pasture raised ducks sell for a lot of money. Cover crops can add Nitrogen. But the one issue that does matter is the carbon gas exchange. Carbon is released from organic matter and bacteria under the soil. It should be considered as a nutrient to your plants. Grow a variety of cover crops but they should all have deep roots. Leave the roots in the soil. 2/3 rds of all Organic Matter in the soil is decayed roots. If you feed coffee grounds to your worms, you will get Nitrogen. Wash egg shells and sterize them in an oven at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Worms will give you Calcium which prolongs shelf life of vegetables. But the worms will also produce chitinase which is an enzyme that eats the exoskeletons of aphids. Actually, too much Nitrogen is not good for your plants. It attracts bugs.
@@blackheartt420 you can crush mint leaves and spray it around the garden . or get ducks and let them in for limited time or they'll eat up your plants too !
BEFORE MINT FLOWERS (mine is a light purple), harvest it to the ground. It will then be weed free. I lay in parallel to my rows in my raised beds. 4 or 5? lined bugs appear in June here. To get rid of them, crop the mint on the first sign if damage, then keep moving it low and removing the cuttings when they see beetles lay eggs. By the end if June, the insect will have completed it's life cycle and died, the mint will be renewed, and you will have fewer 4 or 5 lined bugs next year.
It's possible I'm exposing my ignorance of no till systems here, but would a light cultipacking before transplanting or after direct seeding help with your erosion and germination issues? Maybe compost wouldn't firm up as I'm imagining it would? Slugs love my strawberry fields, though they don't carry desease up here, they do damage the crop quite a bit. I was going to try sluggo this year, but I hear it's hard on earthworms, so I wasn't feeling that great about it... how are you spacing out your beer traps? I suppose it's possible I just need more... I made a wooden pallet box that I use for spreading loose straw. It's the width of my tractor bucket for easy loading, then I pick it up with a 3pt mounted westendorf forklift (my favorite tool of all time). Then you can drive over the bed and unload it. If I've got a driver I just stand in the box. If I'm working alone, there is a hinged segment on the back I can let down, so it's a better working hieght with the pitchfork. I would think It'd work well for compost too. Great content as always. I love the spirit of your videos, it's all about learning, which I really appreciate. Thanks Jesse.
Thanks, David and thank you as always for your contributions! So I think a cultipacking of some sort would help. We usually roll with the Johnny’s bed roller, and it does seem to help a bit, but hard to say if it’s enough-rolling our mulchy compost feels a little futile to be honest. Charles Dowding walks on his beds! I am spacing the beer traps at about fifteen feet apart. That is not based on anything except that was how many plastic pint cups I could find! We haven’t tried sluggo. I am actually doing away with all organic pesticides this year. And I’m a little nervous about it, but we will see. You’ve got me wanting to run out and check on my strawberries, though!
@Thelondonbadger I'll look in to that, thanks! I'm realizing I don't know enough about slugs to know if that'd be effective. I'm organic so I couldn't have them in there until after the crop is off. But if controling them in the summer and fall would help with populations in the spring, I'd try it. I already use geese to weed them, so it wouldn't be much more work. It's good to have a lead to follow up on, thanks again!
@Thelondonbadger It looks like ducks will infact eat strawberry plants, roots and all. It was a good thought though and worth looking into, so thanks again. Looks like I'll be spending my beer money on the slugs again, I've decided sluggo will be a last resort.
For some of our issues for sure. That's accurate. Though I do add good compost to this for fertility. Also good compost still comes with P issues and would still around in our climate. Not sure about slugs, though. Better compost would likely help there.
Agreed. I'd say he needs a higher quality biodynamic thermal compost, more diligent mulching with something like barley straw, and a nice thick layer of cover crop! Just my opinion! Definitely enjoyed hearing the good and bad though forsure!
Yes! At the farm where we interned this was common. Your choices are really 1) add it and wait a few weeks for the soil to digest it or 2) get it moist and let if compost more and around 135 so as to not really “cook” it further, but rather to break up the chunks. You could also layer it with some other things and let that break down--bugs/microbes will help render it useable over winter. Honestly, I would kill for some good manure-y stuff right now for use with cardboard--a great combo
That's not the best way to do no till. Compost as a bed is only useful to sow tiny seeds in, like carrots or radishes. But it should NOT be used a mulch. Mulch is wood chips, straw, hay... NOT compost. Compost does not feed the soil, because it's been digested already. So it only feeds the plants. And if you get compost from the dump, it's too rich in nitrogen. And compost is a form of unstable humus : so it leaks nutrients under rain, like a chemical fertilizer. So you leak nutrients in rivers and waterbeds. Compost solves your soil issues only paired with carbon rich mulch like wood chips. Better to have pure wood chips and no compost than the other way around. And like you said, compost doesn't hold water at all, because it has no structure, no porosity. So you really should stop composting leaves and branches and stuff, and chip them instead to make your own mulch. Unfortunately this "100 % compost" method has been made popular by people like Charles Dowding who don't really know what they're doing... People end up with gardens with crazy amounts of organic matter, and NPK levels, because they put compost, vermicompost, worm castings, rock dust, coffee ground, compost tea and god knows what else, when a nice mulch and a little bit of compost is usually enough... Not to mention cover crops.
If Dowding doesn't know what he's doing, how come he's made a living of it for over 30 years? It's interesting to hear different views and criticism, but it's hard to agree with what you say when Dowding's garden seems to be doing just fine.
Tests show that slugs dislike traveling over both WELL-CRUSHED EGGSHELLS and COFFEE grounds. I suspect they are irritated by those textures. They never eat my borage for similar reasons. COOK EGGSHELLS to prevent transmission of salmonella.
I think you need to work it in slightly or at least just break up the surface a bit so there is a better mix, otherwise, a lot of the nutrients like nitrogen is outgassing to the atmosphere.
Funny you posted this, have been having the exact same problems and has made me think a lot about all the process in my farm. I'm considering starting to use much more mature compost and integrate better and more of my chicken manure, to add that nitrogen in the compost proces. I'm using what looks like a very similar compost in texture, and have had some problems to what looked like perfectly great spring onions. Which I point at some nitrogen loking in, since I applied some compost on the beds with the crop still in it as an extra mulch, or maybe the onions didn't like that hilling up. Thanks for the videos and hudge thanks for the podcasts.
Yeah, dang. Compost and nitrogen is complicated. I plan to address fertility more in coming videos and in season 2 of the podcast. Thank you for watching and listening
The deal is, that compost from the video isn't finished, and it's wood chips. Wood takes a lot of nitrogen to break down, which it takes from the top of the soil. Onions have sad, shallow root systems. Idk if it works for you, but I plant inoculated beans or peas all over the place to feed the breakdown. If your operation couldn't take proper interplanting, you could alternate rows. Your much will break down faster, though, so be cognizant of that
your soil is not draining because of a lack of roots (which are decomposing leaving microcanals to lower earth layers, grasses, daikon radish and turnips work well), slugs are there because there are no predators in the area (attract birds), compost is high in nutrients aswell (too much might burn the small plants even before the break ground), phosphorus can be washed down to lower earth layers (some covercrops, mostly grasses, bind it and store it for later in the season) I'm no farmer, all i know is learned via reading and watching, People like Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin and many others are quiet the grandmasters
Sure I know their work well. We leave roots in after harvest. We use cover crops. The slugs are mostly in the tunnels where the birds don't go. Obviously, all these areas can be improved but it's rarely that simple. We're doing more cover crops but also more crops period. That certainly helps. Our soil actually drains great but our rain events are intense. Last year ky received 70+inches! Context is important
Hey man I just wondering if it would be possible to come up see your farm in person I live about a 2 hour drive from you like to get started in a market garden so I would love just to look around a farm that is running one that is no till any way so if possible let me know thank you for your time
So would urea in a bag ... one bag would likely equal a truck load of ship.... I’ll go with the bag.... I’m lazy like that and I don’t compost and I don’t till... I just plant and spray weeds with round up😳😁
I had to dig drainage trenches in many of my pathways, and cut a few beds in half with a cross-cut drainage to allow the water to cross. Instead of a 100 footer, I've got two 50-footers with a cut ditch across the middle. A bad year 2 (3?) years ago wiped out half my Garlic crop. Something had to be done. Several days of hand work with a shovel. Too hard to get a ditch-witch in there. Couldn't find a rental small enough.
I actually think there are a lot of advantages to 50ft over 100ft beds now. The first is morale. If I did six beds in a morning vs. 3 I would feel literally double the accomplishment. Also, if I had an area that naturally drained in the middle as you said I think that would help, too. I also think 50 ft is easier in some ways for crop planning. More options for small runs then trying to plan to split a bed.
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I've been binging your channel and I'm really grateful you kept your whole shift from till to no till. Seeing how you are thinking through things has been very helpful to my mental digestion of the content.
The article as promised www.notillgrowers.com/blog/2019/4/18/downsides-to-the-deep-mulch-compost-system-in-our-context
ALSO, we have tried ducks. We love ducks and their is a good market for their eggs. And they do eat slugs but they also eat greens (despite popular belief to the contrary) and clobber literally every young start in our garden. Again, we have tried it. We likewise can’t have them pooping on salad greens. And as a certified organic farm, any raw manure added to the garden (like fresh duck manure) must be added 120 days before harvesting lettuce. In the off season, sure. In the growing season, ducks are in our experience not a great solution.
Duck or pathogenic nematodes for the slugs. I think there is also a type of beetle that eats them.
Good info from experience. Thanks!
The moral of the story is, farming is hard work. Period.
Helpful post. I've stumbled down this same no-till path for many years. Poor compost, slugs, chips in the produce, and nutrient analysis with phosphorus levels off the charts. Now I cover crop in the fall with oats, use organic alfalfa pellets and dress beds with less than 1/4" of compost (heavy silt soils). After 20 years I still can't grow a decent carrot. Still lots to learn.
Thanks for the content. A hobbyist gardener here. I do light tilling ( 7 inches ) to open up the soil so it can receive water , otherwise you have surface runoff. As for slugs , i use lots of coffee grounds tilled in the soil. That helps.
I live in southern Kentucky. I use fall leaves and grass clippings on my garden. I have very few issues with these, as my covering.
Heck yeah. We just found a leaf source ourselves. Great cover if you can’t get it (and especially if you can shred it).
@@notillgrowers I run mine through my push mower, into my bagger. The main problem is that my bagger isn't very big, and I'm constantly having to empty it. Other than that, I have very few problems, in my garden.
Greetings from the motherland of Kentucky!
Sadly I recently discovered that the squirrels prefer my leaf mulch for their nests. The only downside tbh.
This was two years ago already, but. This year was my first year going bigger than an 8x4'. I did cardboard. Then alternated mushroom soil/mulch, And a regular wood mulch, to separate rows from walking paths, just as you did. However, I mounded my rows, and dug a ditch at the top. I filled that in with a potting mix it mixed up myself(coco, peat, perlite...kind of costly to start. 40/40/20 to 45/45/10%. When transplanting starts, I threw a couple beads of triple phosphate in the hole and set the roots right on top. A little azo for flavor. I mulched around the bases with rice hulls. In later rows, I quit spreading the potting mix across the whole top and just made a whole bigger than needed when transplanting and backfilled with it. I did add some amendments as well as some compost teas. The results lead to Stewpendous Growth. Which then became the name of our 'StewTube' channel. We just share our backyard gardening experience, taste tests. I hope anything I have shared will help. If you see anything I did that im doing that will hurt me, let me know. I have also started composting to replace amending as much or at all, depending.
Fill the paths with woodchips level to the surface of the bed.
That way, can´t erode to the side nearly as much.
I have actually tried this! The wood chips just get washed out before the fungi can take hold. I do have one spot like that that seems promising, but I had to keep it covered for a month and inoculated with king stropharia. But it’s holding okay and we’re getting mushrooms!
What about some biochar?
I deeply appreciate you addressing pros and cons. I am happy that I have a simple urban backyard Permaculture configuration. Even then, your tips can be extrapolated from microcosm to my circumstance. Very helpful. Thanks so much!
I had a 13 inch rainfall the night after I layed my compost and rowed up the garden. The walkways filled in a little but I actually lost no compost or soil. I expected to find the entire garden in the neighbors ditch but none of it washed out.. Compost/mulch covering the soil saved my ass and my garden.
13 inches!? Ugh. But that's great. Good counter- perspective. Are you on a slope at all?
Rough Draft Farmstead its an urban plot, no slope. But I have two canals within a quarter mile so water does drain off usually. I live outside of Houston so rain can be horrendous. Harvey finished that year off. 4 feet off water with a strong current flowing through my garden for hours. No soil loss. Im actually planting those beds this year. Compositing/mulching the beds saved my dirt. Compost never left the bed. My walkways didn't even fill in :) 4ft of water! It works.
Love the content! Love the videos!
@@arguspanoptes6241 you have very little slope and water movement was slow , so it did not disrupt the compost. Its the speed of water flow that decides what stays and what washes off.
Precious video. One really needs to understand what kind of downsides we should expect when trying new ideas. (I'm a bit new to this concept.)
Thank you and greetings from Portugal.
I alternate top dressing with compost and leaf humus (fully broken down leaves I get at a local mulch place). The leaves add a lot of OM but very little NPK. It’s also easy to sprinkle down some lime if you’re worried about acidity. Carrots germ much better for me in leaf mulch. I’ve also decided that Sluggo is a must for me in lettuce plantings.
I'm sure there are echoes of this in the comments already, but...
That compost is VERY mulchy. If it was actually composted, they need to run it a bit longer. My compost doesn't get great solar gain, so I have to run it longer. But it comes out great.
I hear you on the labor of moving that stuff by wheel barrow. Ugh.
Great content. Headed to your website to get more info.
Thank you for the realistic video. No till definitely should not be thought of as "less work", you are spot on. I think it is almost easier to garden in a tilled environment with all the mechanical tools you can use. I still prefer a no till for how much kinder it is to nature but I haven't had the blessing of less work that some have had. And honestly, it might be that I am doing it wrong too. Your operations looks fantastic. Super impressed! Thanks for the video.
I love the deep mulch concept. I use it in my veg gardens and definitely could've done it better had I known more initially. But live and learn. I first learned it via Paul of Back to Eden Gardening. I noticed you did rows of mulch where he has it laid out over his whole garden area...may help with erosion issues although not 100%. What I did learn the hard way is to pull the mulch back and plant in the soil. Then as the plant grows, cover the ground underneath the leaves around the stem with the mulch. This helps with the germination and moisture retention. May help with the mineral content available to roots as well since they're in the soil receiving compost tea instead of straight compost. Some of these just thoughts...some experience. You're way ahead of me so take what I say with a grain of salt. Btw I did enjoy the Karl Hammer podcast. That man is a compost genius...lol. He did seem to address the initial till with compost to enrich the current soil...something you pondered before this video...just interesting to see topics coming together. Keep it up man. Knew viewer and subscriber 👍
No salt needed, that's exactly correct. If it were finished, the compost would work, but it's much. You definitely need to move much aside to plant
I found slugs get attracted to marigolds like crazy, too.... If you plant some marigolds, they may spare your main crops. Works for my small garden.
(but i hav to manually kill them on the marigold, or the plant get eaten entirely within a week.)
I find that your mulch works best in my food forest. The no till garden had black plastic on the growing area until April when we picked up organic horse compost manure and hay broken down for up to a year. That is spread over the rows a few inches deep. Then wood mulch is placed in walkways and around plants high enough, etc. Any added fertilizer is in the form of cleanings from the chicken yard where we throw organic waste from kitchen, orchard harvest, or garden clean up. I appreciate this post and may change the direction of the rows to prevent erosion. Thanks!
Main problem l can see with your compost is the size of the particles.
Too big as top soil and too small as a mulch.
You can,t grow directly into it,so no roots to hold it in place,and too much flow between particles,so they get caught by wind and water and rushed away.
I had this problem in my área,windy and dry for the main part of the year,and a few days of heavy rain on early spring and early fall.
Fixed it by adding loads of composted mix of coffe grounds and shreded cardboard.
It holds perfectly in place no matter how strong the wind is,and it is able to suck in and hold the same volume of water as the volume of compost is.
On top,ir keeps fresh during the summer hit and warm during winter.
Easy for a garden,not so easy for a farm,l know,but,as someone says,you can change the world one yard at a time.
And time is all you need to completely change this situation.
Hope this is usefull for you and others.
Greetings from Spain.
Slugs are attracted to the mycelium in the woodchips.
When we start a new bed, we always need to broadfork it. We have heavy clay soil. No way around it, unless we want to wait years (if not decades) to put them in. And we don't. Then we treat them as no-till.
what is "them" ?
@@blueplasma5589 The beds.
Epic Gardening has a video on this. In summary, a no-till bed needs to be tilled on creation, and THEN never again.
You have to prepare the ground: Loosening the base soil, maybe modify with sand (for clay) or clay (for sandy soil).
Add different composts in thick layers: Plant compost, manure compost, throw on some bone/horn chips to offset the nitrogen deficiency from still intact plant fibres that use it up while decomposing.
Till all that together, to mix it and homogenize the structure.
Water generously to compact it.
Add mulch: Half-rotten wood chips. Grass cuttings. Straw. Hay. Plant matter. Do NOT mix it in!
If you didn‘t see ANY worms during all this, maybe order some compost worms online to kickstart your soil.
Also, no-till is a misnomer. You still want to gently mix in your fertilizers so they stay where they are needed during watering. You basically drop your fertilizers on the ground and then just scratch up the surface.
I do love your honesty in showing both positive and negative outcomes. Your willingness to experiment is what I enjoy the most.... grab a beer, we got an extra bed, f$
I appreciate hearing about the downsides that need addressing. It's not "just me" running into some of these.
I realy enjoy your videos. They are very informative for me,a new gardener. I doubt that I will ever be completely no till or organic because of my advanced age but I learn from almost every video you show. Thanks. Havagudun bud.
I tried the beer traps. First night I had dozens of drowned slugs. Second night the raccoons discovered free beer. In some drunken rumble they destroyed half a row of greens by digging for the spilt beer. This happened every time I used organic based fertilizer. Bone meal, fish, chicken manure. Must have driven them crazy trying to dig it all up. There was even a fox digging up my rows, thinking there was a dead animal buried there. Good luck friend.
Oh man. That's an amazing (horrifying) story.
No worries. Manure doesn't set them off. I do no till as well, but much smaller scale. I found that the looser the mulch, the more slugs.
Diatomaceous Earth for crawly things? Just circling the plants?
I was trying to figure out why the soil was so "light and fluffy". Then I saw your website. Deep Compost Mulch system :) Lesson learned
thanks so much for posting
About your erosion. I used wood chips in my walkways and heaped them up on the same level as my beds
You don’t have a slug problem-you have a duck deficit.
I have had slug problems in the past and used diatramatris earth, just sprinkle it all over the paths and beds seemed to help alot
and i used food grade so if it was on the plants such as lettuce it is not a problem.
I have been testing 3 different compost that I can get close by to build some deep compost beds. All of them have the germination problem that you speak of. I found that by adding peat moss to the top 2 inches of the bed it helped in retaining the moisture needed. All so I saw you on another farmers post who was dealing with compost problems and he blended in half leaf mold to retain moisture better. For sure you need to do something if placing it down deep.
We're harvesting compost from the chicken pens, so that works for the nitrogen. The important part people ignore is that with the right fungal mat, your clay and rocks become your fertilizer....this is all part of the soil science, that your enzymatic action in the soil will break up clay and rock, making all of those nutrients bio-available to the plants.
Thanks, very appreciative. You gave me much to consider.
Slugo works great against slugs.
chilated iron is active ingredient
I've seen it omri listed
Very effective and safe
Pellets can generate little fungal spots, only an issue under lettuce heads
I do no-dig gardening with mushroom compost and have almost no slug problem.
Good to know
I noticed that too with mushroom compost last December and no hard evidence of slugs. But why?
@@insidethegardenwall22 Slugs like a real wet environment like straw. Mushroom compost, or any compost for that matter holds moisture good but not like the straw.
I don’t think I’ve heard most of those downsides! Thank you 😊
Great points. Mulch looks a bit woody. To many “airpockets” for direct seeding. Setting beds up keeps you in shape for sure.
I had my beds set up downhill originally. They washed out more than they do now that they are on contour.
beer moats are great!!
btw, i laughed out loud... hard, when you said "a most awesome death"!!
A beer most! I've now added that as part of my dream home
Mixture of flour, sugar, water and yeast can sub for beer. More for you drink!
I really enjoy watching your channel. I am starting out with no farming experience with the exception on my condo second floor balcony and walkway. I remember my grandparents having a garden and in fact when we was children my dad would sometimes grow a few rows.
So Iv had all of the big city life I can take; Iv acquired 4.5 aces 100 miles south of Dallas.
I have planned this for 20 years so I want to get some things right.
What would be the first things you would do to make a garden.
Best time to collect slugs is just after dark with a flash light. Then you will see that there are way more of every size than you even imagined. They hide under leaves, pot or wood and come out at night.
Paper sack & a salt shaker.
Walk thru picking them up throwing them in the paper sack salting them before the crawl out.
Then I put sack on the burn barrel when done.
Do it a couple times in the spring and you will remove hundreds of slugs in a short amount of time.
bed width of Charles is 1.20m ie 4 feet, his compost is a better quality: brown and fatty not a quick dark and woody that you have, this make all the difference, then he waters regularly his bed.
Compost quality is very important, if you want to stabilize your bad quality compost, you've got to mix it with top soil, but this is not no dig anymore! I've selected a better quality compost that is 8 times more expensive than the standard quick black woody and dry one.
Charles' compost is near quality of a wormcast compost not a quick industrial green waste. Try to find a supplier of quality compost that is decomposed by worms or mushrooms not a quick bacterial one.
Secondly, you have to let the root of veg when you harvest, i gess your soil is compacted so you can restructure your soil with daikon radish you let rot during winter and other green manures like sorgo or rye or maize. Charles started from a prairie he covered, he let the root network to decompose so rain can drain easily.
Compost quality is a big deal. It is hard for us and many in our area to get anything good, so some amount of supplement or at least improvisation is required, but I would love to see what the difference would be. And as you said, his beds are essentially 4X8 so covering that in nice compost does not come with the expense it would for us at 30”X100’. We always leave the roots in after harvest, even on baby greens.
@@notillgrowers Would it be possible to get ahead on your compost order, ie order one year's worth a year ahead of time, and give it time to compost further into a finer consistency? I suppose to do on such a large scale would either take equipment to turn it or a fair amount of labor. Unless you went a couple years in advance and opted for anaerobic/slow composting. Though would still need space/stalls/tarps to house it, perhaps requiring several smaller piles worth of space as opposed to the whole order's worth in one pile for proper decomp. Just brain fartin out loud here. Good day to you.
I live by the coast and have horrible slug problems. I successfully cured my garden of slugs by covering my soil around the base of the plants with diatomaceous earth (DE). It's cheep and super effective. The only way to get rid of slugs is to create an unsuitable environment for them. They love no till because of all the excess moisture held in the compost; which is fine, they are part of the big picture, but we can prevent them from harming our crops with small amounts of DE applications around the base of our plants. The slugs wont commit suicide by crossing the DE barrier, they just stay in the soil and break down the things you want them to and not the things we want to keep for ourselves.
Slugs. Get 2 ducks and let them run around the garden. That will be the end of the slug issue.
"You don't have a 'to many slugs' problem, you have a 'to few ducks' problem" - Bill Mollison
My chickens eat all the slugs and snails 🤢. Chickens do bring their own challenges to a garden, though
My family had a pair of ducks (Polly and Wally) when I was kid in the 70s in the PNW. My mom would loan them out to neighbors to deal with their slugs as well.
Nothing like duck poop on my greens
Barbed wire made of THORNS to combat the devils spawns
that System wich you have is only for very Little farms good but for a bit bigger ones it is to work intensive
Have you heard the podcast? Several people doing this on 3+ acres--singing frogs, Four Winds Farm, etc.. Worth looking at some drop spreaders, too. These could open it up to even larger scale.
@@notillgrowers we have 31,5 Acres
Do you do any sort of no-till currently? What kinds of crops?
@@notillgrowers well i would like to do None plowing we have potatoes onion garlic carrots beets wheat corn and gras
Have you found Gabe Brown yet? He is doing it on thousands of acres.
I am wondering if permanent paths for the water could be useful with using gravel to the obvious places the water wants to flow. Also I do think you want to till in the first round of compost at least that is what I gathered from listening to John Kempf furthermore on the same point tilling is not tilling when you are tilling in a large amount of organic matter, it's just not the same as tilling the ground with no compost.
You could spread parasitic beneficial nematodes for the slugs. Thicker mulches don’t wash away, but absolutely cannot be seeded in with small seeds.
can problem one be solved with a system similar to a raised bed or would that be impractical for commercial farming.
A few vids you'd done...you mentioned the footpaths becoming eroded. I understand the wood hip not working out so won't mention more about it. Consider using cut green material...I'm saying use unseeded grasses ... unground stuff. The wood chips will float away but straight-fibred long stems will be morecrigid...less moveable. Try one idle n see. Blessup
Read up on coffee grounds. Good to repel snails and probably slugs. Coffee grounds is also a fertilizer ; 6 pounds per 100 square feet. It can also be used as a
repellent for mosquitoes when burt dry in a contaner. Also use in yard for bug repellent like fleas. Also my honey bees loves old coffee grounds. It is supposed to help with memory for them. I've collected two 55 gallon drums of used coffee grounds. I will be using it in my garden this year. Who would have guessed this. I just happen to run into this information.
I think you have moved off this property already but as long as you have a wooded area much like the wind brake you have in the background you'll always have a steady stream of slugs. Slugs also love to multiply in tall grassy fields. I have woods behind the property and I have an intense population of slugs and moles. No matter how many I remove from the property there are more taking their place. They eat my garden to the ground. If I had the ability I'd get 4 to 6 ducks to help out and garden with me but I can't do that.
I'm sure you have seen Curtis stone bubbler for washing salad, that would sort out the debris for u?
It works great. We have a bubbler and it leaves our greens virtually slug/bug free and our compost washes away too.
Very useful, thanks a lot!
I think a contributing factor for lack of germination in your mulch is lack of soil to seed contact.
i have been doing no till for about 20 years. I am tired of trying to build rows, carry compost, straw and suck. I think I will go back to in groun growing and till between the rows... Too old to do so much carrying
In my opinion the main reason you're having erosion is not because of the mulch/no till, it's because you have nothing in the trails you're walking. . On a slope that walk way turns into a gutter and water is going to flow down it hard. During a hard rain the mulch is like a sponge but if there's nothing there it's going to wash bad. The Mulch will also wash away if it's not thick enough during hard down pours.
I live in Texas do you think I could serve the slugs salted Margaritas instead of beer?
Possibly, but you may end up with some rowdy slugs...
@@notillgrowers We're kinda rowdy down here anyway besides it'll give them something else to suck on other than our produce.
Great content as always, thanks for sharing!!
Thank you and thanks for watching!
There is a new BCS compost spreader JMF is testing right now.
I literally just watched that video. I want to try it out!
Good R&D! Sitting here "quarterback gardening" watching your video, I see alot of carbon in your mulch covering. It seems you need to figure out your Carbon:Nitrogem balance for your plants and microbiome.
The only problem we have is we end up with lots of earwigs and pill bugs/rolly polys.
I use my manure mixedwith bedding and comost that needs to drain into soil
How many years have you done no-till? I am not doing commercial gardening however, slugs were bad for the first few yrs in my garden but not so much anymore. Been no-till for 6-7 yrs. I think it also could depend on the condition each yr. Some wetter than others.
Any experience or insight on compost beds on top of very sandy soil?
Thank you
Egg shells and wood ash will take care of slugs, they cannot tolerate the rough surface of the material. Also this fertilizes the soil, eggshells provide calcium!
The solution to the problems is using indian way of ploughing with bulls using very less energy on earth surface which doesn't damage the microbes that much compared to tractor ploughing
Not sure how you could manage on a large scale operation I sieve compost and lay a row where fine seeds get sown.
That garden has some LARGE scabs. You NEVER want to be able to see brown. Cover it with a carbon source or even better have a cover crop. ✌
Or just water and even feed those patches... Yes its true I feed and water the ground at times... I take the 'Feed the Earth' approach... A bit literal at times... Feed the parts Of the Mother Earth under your feet... I used to work for a old farm lady who waters everything, everything... Her whole peice of Earth... She called it her way of 'Staying True to Form' concerning Biodynamic Principals of Farming And Gardening...... She was totally serious and was brilliant...
I've seen a market garden in England that does no till who does not mulch often. It seems the compost acts as a mulch in some climates and topography.
But I'm in central Florida and it gets way too hot and the sun is too strong on the summer for me to not mulch
We did a deep compost mulch the first year and I found that the moisture retention was actually worse than the native soil (OM is less than 1%). The compost organic matter was around 50%. So I don't know why that happened but it did. Now what I do to the deep compost beds is just soil test them and find what they are missing. We found that they were deficient in nitrogen, sulfur, manganese, magnesium, zinc, copper, cobalt, molybdenum, and boron. That tells me that compost isn't always created very well and the materials used for the compost could be deficient in those trace nutrients. Since adding those trace nutrients in, our crops are thriving. They are growing like jungle trees. It is amazing. I think the deep compost method can work as long as it is tested with extensive soil tests and is balanced with the mineral components.
That’s great to hear. I was planning on doing a “when all you can get is mediocre compost” video soon (title undecided). may use that anecdote if that’s cool
Hello... nice video.. I was wondering where/how do you get weed free compost ??
I believe he is referring to a compost that has been "hot completed". A well made compost heap will generate quite a lot of heat that cooks any weed seeds and roots. I think about 50 C should do the job...
How do you fertilize or amend your no till beds?
Anything with low P. So feather meal, alfalfa meal, bean meals. We're hoping to test all of these this year so I don't have a preference yet.
Also veg-based composts and cover crops, living roots, etc..
Rough Draft Farmstead awesome that makes sense, do you just sprinkle on top and then tilth in? Also how much per bed roughly?
Is deep mulch another way of saying no dig? Meaning compost is anually dumped over the beds? If so, or I guess regardless, why did you not choose to do a cover cropping method of no till and then adding beneficial and predatory things like insects and nematodes as needed or even if needed
What have you learned and changed since tris video?
beautiful lettuce. love your videos
Ducks love to eat slugs. Duck eggs and pasture raised ducks sell for a lot of money.
Cover crops can add Nitrogen. But the one issue that does matter is the carbon gas exchange. Carbon is released from organic matter and bacteria under the soil. It should be considered as a nutrient to your plants. Grow a variety of cover crops but they should all have deep roots. Leave the roots in the soil. 2/3 rds of all Organic Matter in the soil is decayed roots.
If you feed coffee grounds to your worms, you will get Nitrogen. Wash egg shells and sterize them in an oven at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Worms will give you Calcium which prolongs shelf life of vegetables. But the worms will also produce chitinase which is an enzyme that eats the exoskeletons of aphids. Actually, too much Nitrogen is not good for your plants. It attracts bugs.
But you can imagine how duck wandering through that lettuce nibbling slugs would affect the crop.
How deep do you put compost on new beds?
Up to six inches for the initial prep, then not even half that for the next year. Maybe 1 to 2 inches or fewer
I find slugs are more of a problem in rainy weather, they really like a moist environment.
Can't you use swales, etc., to capture run-off? You could use siphons to use the runiff as compost tea.
wow crazy science, have it investigate!
correct if i am wrong but planting mint around the garden will help with the slug i think my grandma told me
It may! Mint is powerful stuff. But also mint is extremely invasive. I honestly wouldn't recommend putting it in the garden. Even in pots.
@@notillgrowers ya that is the down side I do not like mint myself
@@blackheartt420 you can crush mint leaves and spray it around the garden .
or get ducks and let them in for limited time or they'll eat up your plants
too !
BEFORE MINT FLOWERS (mine is a light purple), harvest it to the ground. It will then be weed free. I lay in parallel to my rows in my raised beds. 4 or 5? lined bugs appear in June here. To get rid of them, crop the mint on the first sign if damage, then keep moving it low and removing the cuttings when they see beetles lay eggs. By the end if June, the insect will have completed it's life cycle and died, the mint will be renewed, and you will have fewer 4 or 5 lined bugs next year.
It's possible I'm exposing my ignorance of no till systems here, but would a light cultipacking before transplanting or after direct seeding help with your erosion and germination issues? Maybe compost wouldn't firm up as I'm imagining it would?
Slugs love my strawberry fields, though they don't carry desease up here, they do damage the crop quite a bit. I was going to try sluggo this year, but I hear it's hard on earthworms, so I wasn't feeling that great about it... how are you spacing out your beer traps? I suppose it's possible I just need more...
I made a wooden pallet box that I use for spreading loose straw. It's the width of my tractor bucket for easy loading, then I pick it up with a 3pt mounted westendorf forklift (my favorite tool of all time). Then you can drive over the bed and unload it. If I've got a driver I just stand in the box. If I'm working alone, there is a hinged segment on the back I can let down, so it's a better working hieght with the pitchfork. I would think It'd work well for compost too.
Great content as always. I love the spirit of your videos, it's all about learning, which I really appreciate. Thanks Jesse.
Thanks, David and thank you as always for your contributions!
So I think a cultipacking of some sort would help. We usually roll with the Johnny’s bed roller, and it does seem to help a bit, but hard to say if it’s enough-rolling our mulchy compost feels a little futile to be honest. Charles Dowding walks on his beds!
I am spacing the beer traps at about fifteen feet apart. That is not based on anything except that was how many plastic pint cups I could find! We haven’t tried sluggo. I am actually doing away with all organic pesticides this year. And I’m a little nervous about it, but we will see. You’ve got me wanting to run out and check on my strawberries, though!
@Thelondonbadger I'll look in to that, thanks! I'm realizing I don't know enough about slugs to know if that'd be effective. I'm organic so I couldn't have them in there until after the crop is off. But if controling them in the summer and fall would help with populations in the spring, I'd try it. I already use geese to weed them, so it wouldn't be much more work. It's good to have a lead to follow up on, thanks again!
@Thelondonbadger It looks like ducks will infact eat strawberry plants, roots and all. It was a good thought though and worth looking into, so thanks again. Looks like I'll be spending my beer money on the slugs again, I've decided sluggo will be a last resort.
Beer traps? Catch slugs and me! Ha!
Sounds like you could improve many of these issues with a better compost
Sluggo plus took care of my slug problems.
Thanks for sharing!
So, it's more a compost issue than a no-till system issue.
For some of our issues for sure. That's accurate. Though I do add good compost to this for fertility. Also good compost still comes with P issues and would still around in our climate. Not sure about slugs, though. Better compost would likely help there.
@@notillgrowers You need some ducks
Agreed. I'd say he needs a higher quality biodynamic thermal compost, more diligent mulching with something like barley straw, and a nice thick layer of cover crop! Just my opinion! Definitely enjoyed hearing the good and bad though forsure!
Anyone experimented at all with aging and/or amending the cruddy, woody, over-cooked yet still raw compost?
Yes! At the farm where we interned this was common. Your choices are really 1) add it and wait a few weeks for the soil to digest it or 2) get it moist and let if compost more and around 135 so as to not really “cook” it further, but rather to break up the chunks. You could also layer it with some other things and let that break down--bugs/microbes will help render it useable over winter. Honestly, I would kill for some good manure-y stuff right now for use with cardboard--a great combo
Certain species of slugs are there to handle decomposing organic matter so a no till system like yours will attract them. Use spinosad or “sluggo”
That's not the best way to do no till. Compost as a bed is only useful to sow tiny seeds in, like carrots or radishes. But it should NOT be used a mulch. Mulch is wood chips, straw, hay... NOT compost. Compost does not feed the soil, because it's been digested already. So it only feeds the plants. And if you get compost from the dump, it's too rich in nitrogen. And compost is a form of unstable humus : so it leaks nutrients under rain, like a chemical fertilizer. So you leak nutrients in rivers and waterbeds. Compost solves your soil issues only paired with carbon rich mulch like wood chips. Better to have pure wood chips and no compost than the other way around. And like you said, compost doesn't hold water at all, because it has no structure, no porosity. So you really should stop composting leaves and branches and stuff, and chip them instead to make your own mulch. Unfortunately this "100 % compost" method has been made popular by people like Charles Dowding who don't really know what they're doing... People end up with gardens with crazy amounts of organic matter, and NPK levels, because they put compost, vermicompost, worm castings, rock dust, coffee ground, compost tea and god knows what else, when a nice mulch and a little bit of compost is usually enough... Not to mention cover crops.
If Dowding doesn't know what he's doing, how come he's made a living of it for over 30 years? It's interesting to hear different views and criticism, but it's hard to agree with what you say when Dowding's garden seems to be doing just fine.
Tests show that slugs dislike traveling over both WELL-CRUSHED EGGSHELLS and COFFEE grounds. I suspect they are irritated by those textures. They never eat my borage for similar reasons. COOK EGGSHELLS to prevent transmission of salmonella.
I think one issue is, you're adding it in narrow mounds. I've never seen it done this way.
I think you need to work it in slightly or at least just break up the surface a bit so there is a better mix, otherwise, a lot of the nutrients like nitrogen is outgassing to the atmosphere.
Are some no till farms un Texas?
Funny you posted this, have been having the exact same problems and has made me think a lot about all the process in my farm. I'm considering starting to use much more mature compost and integrate better and more of my chicken manure, to add that nitrogen in the compost proces. I'm using what looks like a very similar compost in texture, and have had some problems to what looked like perfectly great spring onions. Which I point at some nitrogen loking in, since I applied some compost on the beds with the crop still in it as an extra mulch, or maybe the onions didn't like that hilling up.
Thanks for the videos and hudge thanks for the podcasts.
Yeah, dang. Compost and nitrogen is complicated. I plan to address fertility more in coming videos and in season 2 of the podcast. Thank you for watching and listening
The deal is, that compost from the video isn't finished, and it's wood chips. Wood takes a lot of nitrogen to break down, which it takes from the top of the soil. Onions have sad, shallow root systems. Idk if it works for you, but I plant inoculated beans or peas all over the place to feed the breakdown. If your operation couldn't take proper interplanting, you could alternate rows. Your much will break down faster, though, so be cognizant of that
your soil is not draining because of a lack of roots (which are decomposing leaving microcanals to lower earth layers, grasses, daikon radish and turnips work well), slugs are there because there are no predators in the area (attract birds), compost is high in nutrients aswell (too much might burn the small plants even before the break ground), phosphorus can be washed down to lower earth layers (some covercrops, mostly grasses, bind it and store it for later in the season)
I'm no farmer, all i know is learned via reading and watching, People like Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin and many others are quiet the grandmasters
Sure I know their work well. We leave roots in after harvest. We use cover crops. The slugs are mostly in the tunnels where the birds don't go. Obviously, all these areas can be improved but it's rarely that simple. We're doing more cover crops but also more crops period. That certainly helps. Our soil actually drains great but our rain events are intense. Last year ky received 70+inches! Context is important
Old Fashioned Quaker Oats for slugs.
Wood chips in the isles is imo a super bad idea, especially if you have slug problems
Funny how soil is different in the world, here in Brazil we have low P but in there you have high P, I wish I had that problem.
Poultry, chickens, ducks, geese..even guineas
Hey man I just wondering if it would be possible to come up see your farm in person I live about a 2 hour drive from you like to get started in a market garden so I would love just to look around a farm that is running one that is no till any way so if possible let me know thank you for your time
Add chicken poop on your beds. It will raise the nitrogen to your soil
... and if you already use wood chips (like he does), you can use that chicken poop pretty fresh, too
So would urea in a bag ... one bag would likely equal a truck load of ship.... I’ll go with the bag.... I’m lazy like that and I don’t compost and I don’t till... I just plant and spray weeds with round up😳😁
'Mornin' Bro. Do you ever sleep?
I had to dig drainage trenches in many of my pathways, and cut a few beds in half with a cross-cut drainage to allow the water to cross. Instead of a 100 footer, I've got two 50-footers with a cut ditch across the middle. A bad year 2 (3?) years ago wiped out half my Garlic crop. Something had to be done.
Several days of hand work with a shovel.
Too hard to get a ditch-witch in there. Couldn't find a rental small enough.
I have heard of this sleep...
I actually think there are a lot of advantages to 50ft over 100ft beds now. The first is morale. If I did six beds in a morning vs. 3 I would feel literally double the accomplishment. Also, if I had an area that naturally drained in the middle as you said I think that would help, too. I also think 50 ft is easier in some ways for crop planning. More options for small runs then trying to plan to split a bed.
“Sleep” ha
You can fortify your beds with barbed wire made of THORNS to combat those nasty slugs!