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There is a very dark corner in my yard (because of trees). The soil there is exactly that dark black leaf compost. Everything grows there, and reaches out for the light. Flowers, perennial bushes, strawberries, and A LOT of massive weeds. I steal some of that leaf compost to amend the soil in my garden areas.

Disappointed you did not show filling that tray

Thanks for the excellent video. Great ideas!

You can just weave the tomatoes thru the panel instead of using clips. It works perfectly.

This video is just someone showing off they’re awesome fence 😂 👌 thanks brother!

@8:00 Please don't stop using leaf compost because of support, stop using STRING.. to support your pepper's just build around them with that wire fence you used, that won't buckle and give like string doe's. Your garden is BEAUTIFUL! everything is lush and green from mother nature's leaves don't stop.

1:36 1 1/4 tube clamps ( pack of 4) for $3

Thanks for showing us what could happen using just plain leaves & not doing anything to the compost .. I’m going to add a few grass clippings & alfafa pellets to try & get worms involved in the process..

Straightforward, excellent. Thx (very helpful info)😊 M

Where did you go?

I started gardening last year, and everybody was talking so much about the borer So I ordered this link to BT and syringes on a video and my neighbors plant had already been infested so I shot it up and literally within a day it had been ate up. They all crawled out and busted out the end. Now, when I did mine, it seemed to work for the most part! At the very end, I think we might’ve had one or two plants get one, but probably died from the BT soon after, but I seen the damage

Do you start carrots and beets in trays too?

Soil blocks are too difficult for me due to hand pain😢

I got a 95% germination for zinnia seed with these trays. Never got high germination with soil blocks but I did get lots of gnats and mold

Your onions need more space to grow big

:40 Start by determining the qualities of your soil. It may simply need an amendment. But you have to take some samples and look, feel and test.

A quick comparison of this video with others on UA-cam shows that both the wrong mixture and technique is being shown. Sorry but your conclusions aren’t valid. Many people are soil blocking and I’ve noted no one else is saying they are struggling in this way. Your soil is too dry, it’s the wrong mix, the soil container is flimsy and at the wrong height for you, etc etc. Like the other commenters I don’t think sufficient research was done prior to this UA-camr using soil blocking himself.

Great video! We put your link in our newsletter about broadforking last Sunday.

I switched to wind strip trays because soil block requires continuous watering and I had a lot of mold growing plus gnats were everywhere

ua-cam.com/video/zzh1m9s_Tcg/v-deo.htmlsi=MnFSNLLiPkN5Ve1Y

How much did it break down, like is there any left now

really nice looking garden.

Many thanks for the video, as it confirms the conclusion that I reached that peat-based potting soil needs to be hydrated first before filling a Winstrip tray.

Leaf compost=black gold

This is a great intro to broad fork for anyone who hasn’t seen one used. Of all the money I have spent on gardening in the last 7 years I can honestly say my broad fork is worth every penny. I think it will be around long after I’m gone too. 😂

7 years ago when I first started my garden I looked into soil blocks. It looked to be more work than it was worth so I decided just to use seed starting trays and I'm glad I did! Soil blocks are just more work than I want to spend my time on. As with most things new tech comes out and makes the old way obsolete. And this is true with air pruning trays. They are the future of growing seedlings here today and I don't blame you for not wanting to mess with making soil blocks when you get the same benefits from air prune trays without all the hassle of soil blocks. One day you will look back on this and say " Remember when we actually made soil blocks" Grow on!

Buddy you just solved my problem for a garden fence on a budget thank you. I don't know if you mentioned it. But what size t posts are those? My loca farm store has six and a half foot

We make upwards of 20,000 soil blocks every year for our market garden and have none of the issues you've highlighted in this video. It's an efficient method of starting seeds, offers the transplants a healthy environment in which to grow, and feeling out the moisture ratio to create stable blocks is an incredibly simple process. Obviously, it's important to find what works best for you but for anyone watching this video, please know that blocking is not inherently problematic as this video implies.

Consider a soaker hose

I prune them and grow them up a tee post, works really well and it keeps them off the ground

I like the functional wall, really looks useful.

Soil Blocks? What mix are you using for those? Mine start out solid & then fall apart so I end up falling back to traditional seed starting. Love my leaf mulch and have started 5 new compost bins this year! Excited too try vermicomposting once I can figure out where to do it inside.

Good job

A trench might be a way around your HOA rules. I recommend three feet deep minimum. Mine is four feet deep with one foot of logs in the bottom to regulate moisture. Three feet wide by forty feet long. It holds an enormous amount of leaves! Begin by filling a ten foot section about one foot above the surface. Continue to feed until it setles down, then begin fillin the next ten feet.

Sprinkling in coffee grounds or adding urea to the water will speed up decomposition significantly. One gallon of grounds to 40 gallons of leaves is enough to make a difference, but more is better. Alternatively mix one tablespoon of urea to one gallon of water. Increase to three for leaves that are hard to break down such as oak, gum, sycamore and persimmon.

When using municipal water for this purpose, it's important to remove chloramines. Inexpensive K85 filters such as Camco and Boogie Blue are only 70% effective when new. The remainder needs to be neutralized with sodium ascorbate ot Vitamin C. 1/4 teaspoon is more than enough to treat five gallons of water.

I like the placement of the Arbor Vitae. Their roots can be very intrusive so distance is key

I am excited to keep building soul with leaf compost. I think some of your success is using wood chips in the pathway. I suspect the yucky soil underneath is far better now than it was.

wow, treasure mountain!!! I wish my city had a place and system like this...

Every city should have this resource available.

Nice garden. Your soil is also dry because you do not cover it with chips or mulch. Sun dries it because the black colour does its job.

I guess I was confused on the second con. Are you saying that it’s so absorbent that it hydrates horizontally rather than going deep? Also any new videos on where your at now with leaf mulch? Thanks from Texas!

Make sure the worms aren't Asian Jumping Worms. They are huge and you will find them near the surface in large groups. Do some online investigating. They may have been in your bought in compost. They will eat a ton of organic matter and they can be quite destructive so double check.

Plant wild lettuce around your garden, they get big, have moist hollow stalks that can be added green and some left in ground till harder. Add the green and dried in situ stalks, plus the leaves on top of your soil. I put the wild lettuce hard stalks, its leaves, soft stalks, leaves, hard stalks, leaves, fresh stalks, then leaves leaves leaves. It eventually all fills in and makes a natural structure to the soil and gives something for the food web to use as a lattice. Also unlike sticks, they break down quickly so you're not stuck typing up N for a long time. Lastly they produce an endless amount of seed that needs no planting. Think mega dandelion, free greens/browns all year not just in season, improves the loose fall leaf medium a lot. They also trap/kill aphids. Good for perimeters.

very good

Dang. Soil blockers have a cult like following 😳😅

It's also dependent on the type of compost you're making, hot compost is the opposite of a cold compost pile as you don't want to see any worms while it's heating up cause that kind of system is too hot for worms to thrive in. It is however good for bacteria that heat up the pile and helps break it down much faster than cold composting. The half finished stuff is rich in life and will break down most soft food scraps in a matter of days if they were strategically placed in the middle of a hot pile. Thus they're perfectly good for being used in beds even half finished, as there's no longer a smell to them, nor is there any real trace of the food left. Now when the pile has significantly cooled down and you do start seeing worms, that is when you know the pile is finished to some degree. If it needs more time cooking, Spiking it with some high nitrogen fresh stuff like coffee grounds or fresh chicken manure helps bring the temps back up especially if those green materials are evenly distributed throughout, fluffed back up, and properly moistened. Turning the pile is a must to keep it aerated so the beneficial aerobic bacteria can thrive. Anaerobic bacteria love compacted stuff, and it attracts all sorts of pests when the compost is too muddy and not heating up properly. The pile also has to be sizable to get to high temps and maintain those temps. I've been working with around half a cubic meter as the box is about that size but the pile is moved from left to right and then right to left when i'm turning it. It gets hot still, up to 155 degrees some days when a ton of chicken manure is added evenly throughout when I turn the pile. I'm also constantly putting new stuff too, so it just keeps going. Harvesting half finished stuff is okay, but I also run it through the worm tower, or sometimes I run it through a rock classifier to get finer materials out and use that.

My soil in 2000 was awful clay with weird colors from Mars I’m sure. Should have used jack hammer instead of shovel to make first seed bed. I implore beginners to mow leaves, bag them in black plastic, saturate them, tie them, poke holes in top and place the out of sight in out of way place and forget them until the following September then harvest the black gold

Thanks for the video. FYI, the different size of worm is likely indicative of a different sepcies of worm than your uzed to seeing. Different medium composition and environmental factors attract different species of worms.

It's November 2023. I don't know about the rest of the North America, but In the province of Ontario, Canada, we have an epic white powdery mildew on all Maple trees. For the past 40+ years, I have been composting the maple leaves. But this Fall, I decided not to do that. I worry that the powdery mildew might survive inside my compost bin and create havoc in my veggie garden when I spread the compost everywhere. What is your opinion?