everytime I watch this channel I feel like I'm watching a science documentary on plants and ecosystems when really it's just gardening tips and tricks. keep up the good vids! I
Just wanted to tell you your videos are really well done and informative. Please keep up the experimentation! I appreciate you're time and efforts and as someone who rarely comments I know there are more out there that feel the same. Great work and thank you for truly building wisdom and knowledge that all can access.
Thank you for commenting. I really appreciate it, and it is so good to know that there are probably lots of people like you who value the work that I do, even if they don't regularly comment. I hardly ever comment on other channels, even the ones I love!
@@REDGardens I concur with Garrett's comment completely...in addition, too often, gardening youtubers add in too much non-relevant "fluff" & opinionated-thought, wasting valuable time with unsupported commentary. You speak in a rapid, but highly discernible speech rate (I am no problem following, even though I am slightly hard of hearing) and offer what appears to be well-researched material that is well organized, offering not only high value information--but also advising us where we might avoid pitfalls from your own learning experience. Your video was easy & fun to watch. Even though I live in a very dry climate in the downtown low desert region of Phoenix, AZ in the US, I still find techniques, approach & ideas that you presented here very useful. I appreciate your efforts to provide this great content !
Jeff Thanks so much for that comment. It really validated what I am trying to do, and inspires me to keep going. I do find it fascinating, and wonderful, that people in radically different contexts can get so much out of the work that I do. Thanks again.
RED Gardens It is great that you cut out the entertainment aspects of it. I mean, I am sure you have a great family and nice dogs, but I am here to learn about farming and gardening. I hate it when I watch a video and several minutes of it is non-relevant material.
@@pby1000 Thanks for that comment, and for your support of my approach to these videos. I know what you mean, I find that additional stuff too much sometimes, and it does turn me off. It is interesting that some people really like and value that stuff.
Thank you so much in helping me fill up my Garden Journals each year... I take notes, you're a great teacher. LOVE all your experimenting, and you are helping me to not just learn, but also to grow bigger and more productive gardens.
I've been watching your videos for a while, there is something unique about the format of your videos that makes them really a joy to watch, not to mention that I really like the fact that you discuss your latest experiments in the garden, focusing on the pros and cons of each approach you take/might have taken. I've been inspired to try new things and be more creative in my garden and, I must say, every new video of yours keeps providing me food for thought! Keep up these amazing documentary videos, greetings from Italy!
Thanks so much for that comment. It really helps to get feedback like that, and to know that the efforts I put into the gardens and these videos are appreciated - even in Italy! Best of luck with the explorations in your garden!
Wonderful analysis. The intelligent man learns from his mistakes, the wise man from somebody else's. Thank you for the opportunity. I hope I can be wise.
I was thinking the same. The chickens would find think that tunnel is a heaven! They would help turn and scratch it in a bit and add they're own manure. There is the drawback of how much they would eat of the vegetation though. Yea they would turn it into manure but they would also digest a lot of what he wanted put into the ground. Maybe pigs would be even better since they would actually turn up the soil a lot better than chickens?
You are right, chickens would have done a decent job of it all. I was contemplating putting my batch of hens into the polytunnel, but a local fox took that option away from me. With all the work I did preparing the beds, I wouldn't want a pig to mess it all up again with their digging. But if I was planning to use pigs, I wouldn't have put in the effort to prepare things, and it probably would have made sense to add something like deacon radish to the green manure mix.
chickens are a lot of work too, energy in vs energy out is my whole thing. Perhaps a lower yield is still an objective gain over expense/hassle of animals.
SunRa I think you are right. Animals would add to the work and hassle, and a time/benefit analysis would be interesting to do. I didn’t make the point in the video very well, but I took the approach of making things quite easy.
But chicken manure - when fresh - is too potent for the plants and will kill them. You need to use chicken manure that's been aged at least a year. However rabbits would be a nice alternative! Their manure is one of the best for plants
Also, between you, me and the lamp post; how many 'suggestions' or 'lessons' that are here, do you just simply not need? The whole world is a critic, huh? I love your humble personality. Its what keeps me LISTENING to your good advice.
There are a lot of suggestions out there! Sometimes I get tired of it, especially the repetitive ones, and the ones where people are essentially saying I am wrong, and need to do it the way they do it. Those can be frustrating. But there is learn gin in all of it for me.
Honest and informative as ever, your work in Ireland reaches far beyond the shores of the Emerald Isle and is very much appreciated her in the Highlands of Scotland. Whilst this is not something I will be applying in the immediate future it is something I've pondered upon at length in slowly developing our own Croft from scratch and trying to decide which systems might work here. Our two climate systems are not too dissimilar and so your videos are an endless source of instant reference to my planning and developing of our own land and farm. I've considered similar, but removing the crop and composting it elsewhere, in almost a rotation of green manure crops to compost rotation. Fresh compost replacing the cut green manure over cardboard. This does not however allow for the intensity of growing you are achieving and I'm only able to consider it as I've focused heavily upon learning and developing livestock systems rather than crop systems at this stage. Thank you once again for your continued excellent work and the support you provide to so many, through your courage to document the full spectrum from success to failure and for all the knowledge each graduation along the continuum provides to us all! 👍🏴 P. S. Loving the scythe, awesome. Was it a local purchase? I've just had about enough of the howl of the brush cutter this week and that looks SO much better.
Thanks for that great comment. It means a lot to know that my work, successes and failures are appreciated by others. It is fascinating to me that most of the viewers of my channel do not live in a climate even remotely like the one we share, and yet they seem to get a lot out of my work. i tis something that I always try to remember when I am doing the videos, that I should continually address the relevance of context. One of the things that I learned from this process of growing a green manure is that the amount of compost that it would produce (if I took it away and composted it) would be surprisingly small - or compared to what I expected anyway. i did some measurements and calculations that I am planning to use in an upcoming video on the subject, but very basic estimates that I have done would indicate that it would only produce enough compost for 10-15mm thick layer over the garden beds - or about 1/2 an inch. This is something, but only about 1/4 of the amount I would have wanted to add. So I wonder if it was worth it from this perspective, thought there are other benefits of course. Yeah, I'd much prefer to scythe, though it takes a lot longer to get skilled enough with the tool to do the job effectively. Good luck with your own explorations!
Thank you for your work and the refreshingly honest way you publish your work together with the thinking behind it and the results. I have used several of your projects on my plot. I have a small (100 sq m) plot in the South of the UK on very heavy clay. I think it could be used straight on a potters wheel. This video is of particular interest to me as I have a bed in the sunniest portion of the plot which is not growing well. For the past two years, using a no dig approach, I have been improving the soil on other beds by sheet mulching over winter with a chopped mix of seaweed and leaves to a depth of about 20 cm and then adding a further 10 cm of home produced compost in spring about 3 weeks before I need each bed. The mulch is slow to decompose over winter but covering with compost in Spring after making sure the bed is well watered accelerates the process and seems to produce nutrient at the right time for seedlings when transplanted. The problem bed has not responded as well to this treatment. It has been built from poor soil when I was levelling an area for shed and storage and also has a rain shadow from two trees that I am not allowed to remove. I would want to keep them anyway as local birds use them for perching and safe points when they are moving around the area. I intend to remove a failing crop of onions and rest the bed until spring next year. I will plant it with green manure for the rest of the summer. Your observations on decomposition here are particularly relevant. I think I will plant a crop for the summer. Cut and sheet mulch early September then sow a winter crop late September to cut and add compost in March thus combining your experience with mine. I don't get much from this bed anyway so it is a chance to experiment. That for me is part of the enjoyment.
Glad you found some value in my explorations, and thanks for the insights into your own issues. It is always interesting to hear about the success and struggles of other people. I have never growing in clay soil, and I understand that it can be challenging, but also very productive if it can be made to work. Best of luck with your experimentation!
excellent communication, thank you so much for sharing with us even if its more of a personal journal/experiment. 50 k views i bet more than me gained information without wasting precious time.
You are my favourite gardener on UA-cam. You go through the whole process. Failures along with the successes. I learn a lot from you. Keep up the great videos 👍
Friend, This is a very balanced evaluation of the options you tried. Since you have water available, best way to build organic matter quickly is to till the green manure into the soil just at anthesis, then water it so the decomposition will be achieved in a few days or max a week. You said it right the nitrogen was stuck in the green manure. Chopping with a scythe is the ideal way of notill. However even then moisture is the key, best till it back until you feel your soil is strong then do the chopping and dropping the green manure, which works in the long run with the slow release, both have their uses and importance. Great video and keep going.
Yes, water content to encourage ideal breakdown is key to whether you get aerobic or anaerobic reactions in the manure. Somewhere between a dry hay (pretty inert) and a fermenting silage (lactic from lactobacilli) remembering fermentation is much different to "wet rotting". The difference between sprinkling from above and hose seepage at ground level will also have made a difference... the leaves that you want to rot down are not actually being periodically wetted, are they? In a vertical heap, gravity removes excess water, but sitting on the ground, it may not be so easy. The mould on the ryegrass was likely due to lack of air currents. Many market gardeners install large roof fans to keep the air moving. Trouble is, this is all extra expense and this fellow is only growing seasonal tomatoes. Perhaps a crop of saffron tulips would make it an economical proposition? Commercially, the next step would probably be artificial lighting and heating to remove seasonal effects. (I jest; that's an insulated hangar space operation). A polytunnel is a semi closed system, rather like my large tropical fish tank, and the challenge is to avoid moulds, algae and fungi prospering when the heat and light are optimum in summer., as cucumber greenhouse owners know. Keeping the air movement inside the tunnel or glasshouse, whilst retaining the warm of the greenhouse effect, implies internal fans for many growers. That means electricity, so, first you build that wind turbine outside the polytunnel ... ;) I have long considered a polytunnel, but the advantages/drawbacks of vertical gardening/hydroponics/aquaponics, in terms of how much you can grow in a particular space, has yet to be resolved in my head. Kudos to this fellow who, in microcosm, is illustrating issues the whole world faces, to feed our burgeoning population. I tentatively agree that chickens or ducks might help, if you kennel a well fed e.g. German shepherd dog in with them, to deter the fox. This video has really got me thinking about a lot of issues, thank you for it. I'm subscribing.
Getting to no till seems like it is a several year process to me. I'm experimenting with composting in place with 1/3 of my rows right now. My winter cover crop was fava beans mainly with some daikon radish. 2/3 of the rows I cut the fava bean stalks and turned the soil over in april, put the stalks in my compost pile & left the fava roots in the soil, this was my 2nd year of cover cropping and pretty much revealed that my soil structure is getting much closer to being ready for another try at no till. I let 2 of the six rows of favas grow until june and cut the stalks down a couple weeks ago and added a layer of my compost with composting worms on top of the new green layer in the rows and then put fabric over the top. I watered everything well at that time. My plan is to replant fava beans in all my rows again this year with some daikon, but I will alternate the rows that I let the fava beans grow until june. This way every three years each of my rows will get a nice addition of my compost with worms. I generate about 3 yards of compost a year, and have probably been buying about an additional 3-5 yards a year. My soil started as almost pure clay / hard pan and this is overall year 4 of improving the soil structure with compost and cover crop. Since this was my first time doing it at this scale (2500 square feet) I think the entire process could have been done in 2 years, but would have required me to aggressively add sand & perlite to the soil in addition to compost. It has been a good learning experience and I will know next time how to improve the soil much quicker. This fall I will try to grow my cover crops in the 2 beds that are resting now with minimal to no tilling. I'm hoping the worms do their job and this 3 year rotation will keep them fed well enough to hang around in the rows I am adding them to.
Thanks so much for detailing your experience, which all sounds very interesting. i have never grown in hard clay, so it is fascinating to me how different it needs to be approached compared to my sandy loam soil. The combination of java beans and diakon sounds like a good mix, and it is great that you have invested the time in building up your soil structure and fertility. i wish I had done that when I started, and now I am trying to catch up.
I did no till the first year here in the US in zone 8a by allowing tall fescue to grow very tall during the summer and then cut several times to allow the roots to penetrate the clay and decay. It really increased soil carbon and workability. I should have done daikon radish over the winter and I'm preparing another fescue plot now in a very rocky area so I will be seeding the daikon about sept-oct.
@Dongs , this is some advice i will try for sure. I have multiple large conifers in my yard. I can put some of the branches that come down in wind storms into a pile, and am planning on having someone out to assess and trim some of the lower branches off of some of the trees. I have 6 or 7 trees that are well over 50' tall and some are a bit overcrowded. I guess when I get the tree service out I will have them chip everything and leave it on site.
@@ryanpalmer2483 I started brewing compost tea this season in a 55 gallon drum. I've done 4 batches this season about to start the 5th. I'm using kelp from vital garden supply and down to earth, vital garden supply's fish emulsion, bio ag's full humix. I'm sure it is doing something, but I haven't really been foliar spraying. Distributing a 55gallon drum with a 2 gallon watering can takes a bit of time. I've had a very low presence of insect pests this year so far. Cover cropping and perennial flowers seems to help attract the right kind of bugs to decrease pest populations. I do have some beet leafminers on my chard, and I've sprayed neem on those a couple of times and remove the bad leaves, no aphids so far this year, which have been a problem in the past, but they usually come a bit later in the season, and slugs I've learned to treat with sluggo when I put my new plants in the garden or seeds are starting to emerge. I still have slugs, but they don't affect mature plants they way they do the little guys. Leaving the 2 of six rows of cover crop intact until June was also a part of my pest management strategy, but I can't really tell exactly how much that helped. I figured leave something big for the snails and slugs, because if I cut it all down at once the only place they will have to go is for the babies. Seems reasonable right?
Hello, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your videos! Once i found them, I systematically watched every single one, then shared them with all my friends, family and anyone I meet that likes to grow. The style of editing, the amount of information, your skill and knowledge, just your basic premise for the videos in general, are all amazing. I don't have any growing space, due to living in the city, but I have been commandeering pieces of my parents farm to grow food and conduct similar experiments myself. I recently used your turning sod method (combined with a few others) to turn and create a new 60 square metre bed. My climate is basically the opposite to yours, but it is amazing how many lessons apply to both of us. Super excited to see what I can learn from you next! If I'm ever in Ireland, I'll make sure to come and donate a day of my labour to say THANK YOU! Keep up the great work.
Wow, thanks! I wonder how may people have seen all of my videos, that is a lot of watching! Interesting to hear that you tried out the lazy bed method. Hope all of it works out for you and that you have a hugely successful garden!
I always enjoy your very informative and well spoken videos. You definitely do your share of research and you are a hard working person. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us gardeners!
The eloquent way you speak, the admiribility of the RED Gardens project, and also the way you think outside of the box brings an air of comfort to your videos. I only just recently found-out about this project, but I am already loyally devoted to it.
Your experiments are very helpful to me. Am learning to grow food by trial and error in a no dig organic garden. Copying what I witnessed at a Rudolph Steiner garden, I started with mustard plants which nourish the soil. Was planning to dig them in later, but then discovered that they were good, nourishing eating so ate my way through it and let some go to seed to start again as another food crop. It was a Japanese red mustard.
Hey mate, ventilation is one of the most important things in the poly tunnel, I get the “no dig” idea but you know it’s better to learn from others mistakes then to make them for yourself, and hind sight is 20/20. I think windbreakers of sorghum or another tall growing green grown in grid formation across your property with green manure ground covers, you can chop and drop and turn the windbreak into a composted windrow, grow it through the summer then cut it down layering it with dirt to make a compost ready to spread out into your garden beds the following season, if your not going to dig then you need to create a fuckton of friable soil with donated green waste eg lawn clippings and wood chips, composting and worms. A small walk behind tractor with a power Harrow or rotary tiller to turn the compost windrows even a cheap Chinese one will do, dedicate a section for making soils along with the composted windbreak/row idea to improve soil
Yeah, ventilation is the key, I just left the end door shut for a while and forgot about it. Interesting suggestions about generating compost. Something I need to find the time to do a lot more of.
I have been watching your videos for well over a year now, and this one was particularly interesting. Your videos have always been informative, full stop. Lots of info for those prepared to watch it all to the end. But in this one you have made huge leaps towards the filmatic and entertainment part of it all. Kudos. I enjoy what you show, one day I hope to be able to support you as well. Thank you.
Thanks so much for that comment. it is nice to know that people watch a lot fo my videos, and get a lot out of them, and that I may be getting better at it! Great feedback to contemplate as I plan the next few videos. And thanks for even considering supporting me and my work!
Thanks for sharing your experiment and it's out come. I use rye and buckwheat anong with other things like field peas, oats and trical. They all have their benefit to add to the ground. With what you show planted I would have chopped the crop when it was most valuable and that is in the 8" to 10" range. If you were to have chopped it then and left it to regrow in that tunnel I bet you would have had to to three cutting. Leaving the crop go to the "wood" stage takes a long time to break down and compost. I'm glad to see someone trying new ideas and experimenting. I have learnt something from this, thanks and thanks for allowing me to share my 2 cents.
I think I agree with you about chopping down at that stage. It owed definitely have helped speed up the transition to a following crop. It will be really interesting to see how long it takes for the 'woody' hay to decompose on the surface.
Hello, im thankfull for Your videos, You show us that we need to experiment at our own in our gardens :) Wish You all the best ! Greetings from Poland :)
I'm a new subscriber. Interesting approach and picking up a lot of tips for our own self sufficiency operation. I like the absence of intrusive music and flash graphics. Keep it up. Thanks.
A single row crimping wheel would work well for doing the damage to the greens. A powered reel mower does the job very quickly too. I would suggest doing beans as a green fertility.
Suggesting you use a cordless hedge trimmer zip tied to a steel rake with the rake head upside down to cradle the trimmer. It should allow your crop to fall down neatly in place . I got this idea from the I am organic gardening channel. Keep up the good work. Your content and insights are valuable!! Cheers from NJ
cover crop works insanely well I did it in all my pots, and the gains compared to the previous year were nuts. I had zero diseased plants and zero yellowing of any plant, even my tomatoes until the season was fully over. Pretty nuts lol, because I had to apply really minimal fertilizer. year prior i had cracked vegetables, a bit of disease, etc and less yield.
Thanks. I try to be careful and concise about what I say, as I realise that so many people who watch my channel are not native english speakers. Hello there in Kentucky - a very different climate to the one I grow in!
@@REDGardens Southern Kentucky is in climate zone 6B. Most people probably don't realize that most of England is in the same growth zone as northern Florida. That's difficult to believe, but true. Your temp. variance between summer and winter is SO much less than mine. We can be zero in the winter and 105 in the summer.
derek a It is fascinating how temperate our climate is around here, a benefit of the Gulf Stream! Over here in the midlands of Ireland we are quite a bit cooler in the summer, with more rain and wind.
@@REDGardens I live about 65 miles north of Nashville; what I affectionately call NashVegas. Anywho, our summers are hot, humid. Right now, I'm receiving a light rain shower. After this has finished, the humidity level will skyrocket.
It takes four acres to provide the needs of one human. I have one acre that is 1500 square feet of garden beds and 3100 square feet of meadow. The meadow contains every native plant in the area and then some. I mow the meadow and put the clippings on the garden area as mulch.
Thanks. Though it wasn't so hard. The toughest part was scything the growth, which only took me 1.5 hours, of careful work, and I enjoy scything. The rest of it was fairly easy, and easier than hauling in lots of wheelbarrow loads of compost, or even turning that much compost. I see this method as an easier option.
Thanks for these really practical videos. I've been cover-cropping and composting intensively in a large garden for ~15 years. The plant health is always wonderful, but the weed situation is is a big time suck and hurts yields. It's interesting to see how people do this on a large / commercial scale, where there is a greater need for results - sometimes at the expense of the long-term soil quality. I think your approach is totally on the mark - grow carbon, let plants do the work, use your sheeting to suppress weeds passively, etc. If you don't want to dig in the green manure it's pretty effective to "top dress" it with a layer of compost or manure. It's like composting in situ, and having some airflow by treating the ground like a compost pile rather than burying everything is helpful.
Thanks for the comments, and encouragement. i think I agree with you that top dressing the cut biomass with compost would have been a better thing to do.
I was going to mention the same technique of applying a layer of compost on top of your green manure especially if you intend on planting shortly after the cutting. Once that is all covered wth your weed supressing material your following crops will be quite happy.
@@REDGardens I do wonder (as you mentioned in the video) how much total biomass you'd get from periodic mowing vs. letting a cover crop mature fully. Some covers like Buckwheat are fast-growing and easy to uproot, but grasses, alfalfa, etc. are so deep-rooted that it might be beneficial to stress the plants so they focus their energy on growing foliage rather than roots. Keep up the great work - you're living the dream!
Iron John It would be really interesting to do side by side studies, but I seem to continually be adding new things to explore, and new questions with every experiment. The potential for knowledge and exploration seems exponential ;-) Another commenter had suggested that there could be an optimal height to cut back the growth. Cutting back too low will leave very little green leaf to regrow from, but leaving a healthy height, would allow faster regrowth and larger amount of total biomass.
Thanks. Yeah, it is a good option if you have the space and time. For those of us who have easier access to money/resources to buy in fertility, than we have extra space and time, green manures may not be a useful option.
It was worth it to plant the green manure. Other quick fixes won't last you years to come. Just keep doing that se thing with the little alterations you mentioned an its bound to do wonders for the soil amd future crops! Thank you for doing what you do and sharing it.
Thanks. Not sure if the benefits in this case outweigh the loss of potential growing space for the time the green manure is growing. I'm not sure about the balance with doing this.
I think some of the mildew problems would definitely be fixed my increased airflow. consider roll up sides? fans? love all the content brother. that cover crop was beautiful
Thanks! It was such a beautiful crop. For the ventilation, I just didn't open the end vents enough. With the wind we get around here it would have ventilated quite well - a rookie mistake.
@@REDGardens it is all about learning!!! I appreciate the videos and that you share the knowledge with others so hopefully some mistakes can be avoided.
Brown.. (wood chips) will tie up nitrogen as they decompose.... and will draw it from elsewhere (your soil)... I used to throw ammonium nitrate on my chip piles for much faster decomposition.... excellent informative... well presented... ^5... great job
Only on the surface will wood chips tie up nitrogen. That's why it's important to not incorporate them into the soil. The wood chips he put down didn't cause the N deficiency in the tomato plants.
Hooray someone exploring the benefits of Green Manure. Great video and hopefully you will turn people onto this beneficial way of growing. Very interested in your trials and experiments and the thorough way you work through problems to get a solution. I will try and email you my own pathetically small trials of using Winter Tares.
Decomposition causes nitrogen knockdown so if you fix this short term problem you'll end up with too much nitrogen later on. Also the tilling and soil disturbance is not what soil organisms like at all, especially earth worms. Try not digging and leaving the materials on the surface as a mulch and habitat for soil biota. Great work, I enjoyed the video heaps.
In my polytunnels I dig in home made compost primarily made of grass clippings, leaves and manure early in the growing season around February. Having two horses helps. I'll let this sit until I plant my tomatoes in early May. When planting I will sprinkle a little NPK fertiliser and extra compost in the bottom of the planting hole. I do this for both tomatoes and peppers. Everything else I plant in raised beds outside except potatoes which I do in traditional drills. I would not recommend sprinkle from above watering as it encourages fungus and mould. Infact I removed my overheads and now water directly onto the base of the stem with a watering can
Having a couple of courses would definitely help, as well as giving the time to allow things to be absorbed in tot he soil before planting. I think I agree with you about the sprinkler system, especially with tomatoes, but I found it quite useful with the overwintering and spring crops.
Excellent, excellent information! Thank you so very, much! This is a lesson for me also. I tried no till this year and I found less weeds but less growth. Likely for the same reason as yours; nitrogen lacking in the soil from the plants consuming it last year. I will try the remedies you’ve suggested here! We’re all in this together.
I have used lawn grass and ornamentals as green manure in my organic raised bed garden for twenty years. I layer compost over and around plants to conserve moisture. An overhead sprinkler would improve growth and improve your efficiency. I have grown hemp grass with great effect. The roots penetrate deeply and enrich the soil and the stalks break down when placed between rows. Good luck.
It’s interesting to watch someone grow in well aggregated soil. I live in Georgia, in the US, and here, we have red clay. It’s easy for me to be jealous of your well-draining soil, but I notice that it’s harder for your plants to uptake nutrients than mine. Something I always keep in mind when I’m watching your videos is “which soil type is better?”
I would love to have the experience of growing in clay, as I hear that it is such a different type of soil, which needs different management. I would love to compare the pros and cons of each.
I like the idea of mowing more frequently. It may have also encouraged more growth overall. I also liked the suggestion by another commenter about adding worms. I have a red wriggler compost system and it can be surprising how quickly they break things down. Perhaps growing a worm colony separately in a container over the same period and then spreading them over the area just before covering with the black fabric for a few weeks so they have plenty to work on and don't flee as quickly. I have heard/read that red wigglers don't stick around after their job is done, so keeping them fed is important, but they also breed pretty quickly, so getting them to fill a large container over winter shouldn't be too hard.
I think you are right that adding worms would help. My neighbour had a really good colony of worms in a bin, and I could have used those, but they were destroyed in the fire.
@@REDGardens Those worms have layed their eggs in most of the soil before. You don't need to add them seperately. They are already there. If not, just throw some hands of composted soil in. In the beginning bacteria is starting the composting process anyway. When the decomposition of the material is mostly done then the worms move in and finish the job. With all the plants only roughly cut it is most important to have moisture underneath the fabric and it must be compressed fairly well by trampling on it to avoid dry air pockets. For the worms need that slicky moist environment. Compare to Charles Dowding's books. Thanx for your great channel. Greetings from Germany!
What I personally do is after i cut the grass in my back yard, I layer cocoa shell, sugar cane and wood chip mulch on top of the cut green manure (cut grass). I personally feel this brings more nutrients into the soil and speeds up the decomposition! I then put a lot of kitchen scraps into the soil such as banana peels. This happens weeks before i plant my crop. And then when spring time comes, the soil is prepared for me to transplant my indoor corn seedlings.
@@REDGardens No, I live in London which seems to be a little warmer, but this method works best in spring/ summer compared to the colder months of autumn/winter.
Love it , I'm try different ways in pop noodle pots , they love crushed egg shell and seaweed , last year I did milk cartons , noodle pots fix nice but it's getting the organic juice right. Got worm farms but they need up grading ,
A very honest report and that's the reason I really liked it. Good for you. Thanks for sharing your valuable experience. Have subscribed already. Greetings from Cancun, Mexico.
Let me tell you, Red Gardens, I have great respect for people who work with their hands, intelligence, patience, care, perseverance... I live in the tropics and growing challenges are somewhat different. But your approach and experimentation attitudes are valued by me. And I know, "It's a long way to Tipperary!" but, then again, ...isn't it wonderful that technology allows us to communicate nevertheless?... Best wishes, to you and your countrypeople... from Mexico. Carry on.
Do you still have the hens, or access to some ducks? Poultry are great for knocking down tall stands of cover crops and breaking up the plants either before or after cutting. I use my hens for this type of clearing, and they make short work of it with minimal effort for me.
Duck will trample down what they don't eat and a extra shot of nitrogen Supplement feeding at one end of hoop house and water at other ensures lots of walking around Duck eggs are prized by Bakeries add a portable Duck coop at one end Ducks tend to lay in the earliy morning so let them out middle to late morning so you have a chance to collect the eggs
I had a batch of 14 hens that I was contemplating to putting into the polytunnel to have a go over the green manure. But then a few weeks before I was going to let them in, a fox or pine martin or some other predator killed them all, and took that option away from me.
I love your spirit of experimentation in order to better learn how to grow crops in a non tillage green manure system. Masanoubu Fukuoka would be proud.
This is a great idea and I am sure it really works. I always noticed that the new areas where I expanded my garden, which were areas where I simply tilled sod over in late winter, produced much better on the first year that subsequent years. I plan on doing a winter cover crop after 3 years or so of growing. My plan is to sow the seeds in September, with the garden plants still there. Then remove the crop plants once the seeds start growing. This should allow them to grow enough to be turned over in late march or so. We'll see.
Gardens often do much better in the first season, due to the release of the fertility in the sod. Growing a green manure, should be a reasonable substitute. Hope it works out well for you.
I have used, peas, clovers, vetch, fava beans, rye, oats, sunflowers, Mustard Greens, daikon radishes, and buckwheat. Mustard Greens can be a good cover crop as it breaks down adds a natural fungicide.... might help to control molds. My tomatoes and green beans do great after mustard greens Daikon Radish is a natural tiller as the radishes go down 12-18". Kale, chards, radishes, beets, chives, parsley and Peppers seemed to do reslly well here. Buckwheat and sunflowers were great for squash and pumpkins.. Just my observations for my small plot in Northern California. Cheers
Thanks for the sharing your experiences. I have started to is some of the brassica greens as a hybrid crop and green manure. I harvest for a bit then let grow until almost flowering, then chop it into the soil. Seems to work well, but haven’t done any comparisons. The mustards are interesting as they can be so vigorous, and seem very quick to decompose.
I’d have flung open the doors almost all the time I think. The whole concept of a cover crop to feed the soil is counter intuitive- the plants extract nutrients. Plus I think the theory is to dig it in which goes against the no-dig thing which I favour too. Nice video!
Yes, they extract nutrients, often from very deep in the soil, but then they release them again into the topsoil, along with a lot of organic matter for the soil life.
like your "trial and error" videos, might i make a suggestion. Try putting chickens in your polytunnel during vinter and early spring, they will feed on your green plants and quickly put tons of fertillity in your soil. They are also a great help in the garden to kill of weeds, so if you have an area which you wanna use for growing, you can start a year earlier with having chickens clean it for you and at the same time enrich the ground.
I was thinking putting in my batch of hens about midway through the growth of this green manure, for all the reasons you suggest, but a fox or other predator took that option away from me! It would have been really interesting to see what they would have done with it all.
Ah bad luck then :), dont give up on the idea thou, it can great reduce the amount of work needed when starting a new growing bed on a poor soil, according to my experience ofc. If you walk into a "normal" chicken coop and look at the soil in there the 1st 30 cm is packed with worms and life.
As far as I know the nitrogen deficiency was due to transplanting the tomatoes in the same time while the Green manure was decomposing. All of the bacteria from the soil moved to the manure to decompose it and it did not feed the tomatoes the nitrogen it needed. In convencional farming you can only solve this by ading UREA or some other fast nitrogen fertilizer.
I had thought that leaving the green manure on top of the surface of the soil would reduce the immobilisation of available nitrogen in the process of decomposition, but perhaps there was still a lot of it with the root systems and small amount of items that I had chopped up in each planting station.
Great video. thanks for posting. I noticed you have big land, how about planting fast growing plants outside and compost them? Then put the compost on top of your garden. Also getting from outside sources of compostable materials (manures, autumn leaves, hays, wood chips, etc) can help speed up your process of building up your soil.
Your suggestion makes a lot of sense, I just haven't had the spare capacity in the past year or so to do that work. It is something that I need to start to do a lot more of.
i read lots of comments here and many are very useful, especially for you. if you can access free wood chips, arborist chips is the best, get them. when it comes to what plant for composting it would depends on your zone. low maintenance, fast growing tall grasses planted somewhere on your property. try jerusalem artichoke, comfrey (though comfrey needs water), legumes.
And I find it hard to quantify what benefit there is as I am also adding compost and other fertility. So I really can't say how much of an impact it had in this case.
Love this video thank you. Am considering establishing green manure first in a few fields. Regarding your nitrogen loss. Why not introduce more legume family and heavy nitrigen fixers? White / dutch clover
I added a lot of nitrogen at the start of the growth, so I don't think it was that there was not enough available. Only that it hadn't started to be released yet. i think this would also apply with the legume family crops. They might fix nitrogen, but I still think that it wouldn't be available to the tomatoes until the vegetation or root nodules decomposed.
@@REDGardens As well, if your goal is to reduce the size of the fragments, which would speed up their decomposition due to increased surface area, you can weld some angle-iron cutting tabs onto the roller itself to chop that forage up.
That was really useful, thank you! It explains some of the problems I've been having with green manures vs crops. Perhaps growing legumes as the follow-on crop would give it time to break down, since they'll collect their own nitrogen? So sorry to hear about your fire damage!
The nitrogen deficiency only lasted a few weeks, then the plants seemed to have as much as they needed. cutting or digging in the material a few weeks earlier would have sorted it.
I think that you might be on to something with the idea for using a lawnmower. I worked at a golf course for about a decade and something important I learned was that you need to pay attention to the height of the cut, and how much you are removing when you do cut. For instance, for optimal no-maintenance grass growth you want to keep it 3 inches tall and remove no more that 20% of the grasses total height, and this carries over to other plants as well (relatively of course). I'd suggest figuring out a way to run a lawn mower over it at 6 inches tall or taller if possible--though most mowers are designed to cut short so this may be tricky--and if possible only cut off a couple inches at a time. I think if your plants are at least 6 inches tall they will still gather enough sunlight for decent growth while keeping a steady amount of material building up in a fine light layer on the ground for decomposition. I wonder about growing green manure specifically to be composted, more time and steps involved and it might not be best for this situation, but it seems like that's what you really need--a steady source of finished compost. I think you mentioned before that you can't get your hands on all the compost you'd like. Anyway just a thought. Thanks for another interesting video!
I've allowed grass to grow tall and therefore grow a large root system before cutting it down. I use a rotary mower with a side discharge and run it over whilst tilting it so the front wheels are in the air. This lets it cope with tall grass. By the third pass you can allow it to run flat as normal. Sort of imitating a mob grazing system.
@souptoaster I think you are on to something really interesting. I have wondered about the issue of cutting, and how much to remove at any one time so that you can optimise the production of biomass. And on the other hand there is the issue of the relationship between the height of growth and the depth of roots as @John Harrison suggests. it is a complex system with the interplay between the behaviour of the different plants and how they respond to being cut, and the option of the tools and time available to manage it all. With my first try, I took the easy option of the single cut at the end, but not convinced that it is the best approach for my context.
@@johnharrison1743 - I'm inspired by the same thing, trading a cow for a push mower. As you say development of a large root system is key to the process.
@@REDGardens - Therein lies the rub, a single cut is the most effective for your time management while more frequent cutting would probably be better but also take up time that you may need to spend elsewhere in the garden. I think the most effective solution would be to invent a 36 hour day! Barring that, it seems like yet another experiment has been added to your project.
@@mrJMD Yep, a balance between the amount of time I want to spend (or can spend) vs the effectiveness of the cover crop vs how my management impacts the following crop. I took the easy way on a lot of this and suffered a bit. But in the end it would have been easier to just add some liquid feed while transplanting than to spend the time digging it in or fussing about the method. Having finished the video, I now realise that I didn't mention that I was interested in exploring the easy way of doing things. If I had a sprinkler system, cut the green manure down a week or two before transplanting, and then liquid fed a few times during and after transplanting the tomatoes, it would have been the simplest and easiest variation of what I did, perhaps.
You have shown an excellent spectrum of teaching skills in your videos. Keep your good work up. When it comes down to life in the soil, I love to spade with my spading fork. It brings green matter a few inch deeper for decomposition under more humid conditions, it's spreading nutrients better, improves aeration of the soil - oxygen and water are both vital for decomposition, excess rainwater is drained off faster, it tears and breaks roots of unwanted weeds and it is worm friendly. After the work is done, you have a better understanding of the living conditions in your soil.
Thanks. Like you, I also like using my spade in the gardens, and I went against my normal preference/practices in this case, as iI have been investigating the possible benefits of no-dig or min-till approaches.
Buying in a mix can be an easy way to start. In my case it would be a hell of a lot more work hauling all that material in and spreading it around for a space this size, than it was to process this material.
I’ve grown bumper crops to build soil structure in hay fields. I have a 20’ flail mower but the best results were when I rented a 10’ weighted roller. Farmers do this in western USA. So I don’t flail the growth anymore. If you do this again, I’d rent a sod roller to bend and push down the growth. My roller has spikes but you just need a few passes to smash it down good. I think you just waited to late to mine the nutrients before planting. A side note on growing tomato’s, the best results I’ve had are growing in rich manure. I don’t even mix it with soil, I did a hole, fill it with manure and plant. In the US, we have a refined product called Black Kow, you probably have a similar product. Tomato plants LOVE the richness of this manure. I also cut nearly all the stems except just a few on the plant tops to bury the majority of the tomato plant stem underground. All those little hairs become a massive root system. You want just the leafy top to poke out and 15-30” of stem buried. That massive root structure yields 5x more fruit and builds a much stronger healthier plant. If you have access to herbicide like GrazeOn (I’m sure it’s in Ireland) you can spray bumper crops to kill the weeds to the root, but it won’t kill forage grasses which you have in that mix. It will kill the clover however.
Thanks for the suggestion about the roller, sounds like it could do the job. I have planted tomatoes in the past like that, but have wondered about the fact that the existing rootball is so far down when los tof the fertility is in the top layers of the soil. It sounds like another experiment or trial is needed!
I appreciate you taking the time to do this, what little time and experience I have with cover crop, is it really all come down to time, I think most want this to be some big thing the first year but of course nothing on this planet works like that and it want for us either but like all natural things will as time goes own, I'd almost say a field done like this one year own one year off would over a 5 year period give the kind of results that we all look for but noticing that thats a tall order for most because a field sitting isnt producing and who has enough field to just sit for a years and still make money as I'm talking about farms and farmer's, even someone with 10,000 acre fields still have their operations set up for the use of every acre so I understand why that wouldn't be practical, I do like and think to some point and size that permaculture farming, even gardening is a healthier way to go for us the people and the planet in whole, doing these kind of experiments will I'm sure in time teach us valuable lessons on a better way and possibly a quicker alternative to revitalizing the ground and growing healthier crops, of course their will always be money disrupted in the world and those that would fight against things like iy has been done from the beginning of time, learning to do something one way takes away from the ones that supply another way and bout goes own which gives us a healthy economy as will, so all win, I'm not sure in your country but I'm thinking and believe there already are some government funding goingbown in this type of growing practices and will only get better so this is the time to get into this type of farming especially for the up and coming new farmers of the world, thanks again
Thanks for your comments, I generally agree with all that you have said. A lot of it does come down to time, and the ability to 'afford' to let land produce for itself. Yep, things are changing.
everytime I watch this channel I feel like I'm watching a science documentary on plants and ecosystems when really it's just gardening tips and tricks. keep up the good vids! I
Thanks!
Just wanted to tell you your videos are really well done and informative. Please keep up the experimentation! I appreciate you're time and efforts and as someone who rarely comments I know there are more out there that feel the same. Great work and thank you for truly building wisdom and knowledge that all can access.
Thank you for commenting. I really appreciate it, and it is so good to know that there are probably lots of people like you who value the work that I do, even if they don't regularly comment. I hardly ever comment on other channels, even the ones I love!
@@REDGardens I concur with Garrett's comment completely...in addition, too often, gardening youtubers add in too much non-relevant "fluff" & opinionated-thought, wasting valuable time with unsupported commentary. You speak in a rapid, but highly discernible speech rate (I am no problem following, even though I am slightly hard of hearing) and offer what appears to be well-researched material that is well organized, offering not only high value information--but also advising us where we might avoid pitfalls from your own learning experience. Your video was easy & fun to watch. Even though I live in a very dry climate in the downtown low desert region of Phoenix, AZ in the US, I still find techniques, approach & ideas that you presented here very useful. I appreciate your efforts to provide this great content !
Jeff Thanks so much for that comment. It really validated what I am trying to do, and inspires me to keep going. I do find it fascinating, and wonderful, that people in radically different contexts can get so much out of the work that I do. Thanks again.
RED Gardens It is great that you cut out the entertainment aspects of it. I mean, I am sure you have a great family and nice dogs, but I am here to learn about farming and gardening. I hate it when I watch a video and several minutes of it is non-relevant material.
@@pby1000 Thanks for that comment, and for your support of my approach to these videos. I know what you mean, I find that additional stuff too much sometimes, and it does turn me off. It is interesting that some people really like and value that stuff.
What you are doing today. Will have a effect on our children and grandchildren.
Remembering we pass our knowledge to the next generation.
Thank You
Nice way of putting it.
Thank you so much in helping me fill up my Garden Journals each year... I take notes, you're a great teacher. LOVE all your experimenting, and you are helping me to not just learn, but also to grow bigger and more productive gardens.
I'm really glad that you have found my videos interesting and useful. So glad that you are having success in your gardens.
I've been watching your videos for a while, there is something unique about the format of your videos that makes them really a joy to watch, not to mention that I really like the fact that you discuss your latest experiments in the garden, focusing on the pros and cons of each approach you take/might have taken.
I've been inspired to try new things and be more creative in my garden and, I must say, every new video of yours keeps providing me food for thought!
Keep up these amazing documentary videos, greetings from Italy!
Thanks so much for that comment. It really helps to get feedback like that, and to know that the efforts I put into the gardens and these videos are appreciated - even in Italy!
Best of luck with the explorations in your garden!
Totally agree Komodo. Definitely something unique. Great Chanel.
Wonderful analysis. The intelligent man learns from his mistakes, the wise man from somebody else's. Thank you for the opportunity. I hope I can be wise.
Well said.
Thanks. I hope to be wise and intelligent, but sometimes I falter on both.
You need chickens . Will stomp down and eat vegetation . This will speed up break down process.
I was thinking the same. The chickens would find think that tunnel is a heaven! They would help turn and scratch it in a bit and add they're own manure. There is the drawback of how much they would eat of the vegetation though. Yea they would turn it into manure but they would also digest a lot of what he wanted put into the ground. Maybe pigs would be even better since they would actually turn up the soil a lot better than chickens?
You are right, chickens would have done a decent job of it all. I was contemplating putting my batch of hens into the polytunnel, but a local fox took that option away from me. With all the work I did preparing the beds, I wouldn't want a pig to mess it all up again with their digging. But if I was planning to use pigs, I wouldn't have put in the effort to prepare things, and it probably would have made sense to add something like deacon radish to the green manure mix.
chickens are a lot of work too, energy in vs energy out is my whole thing. Perhaps a lower yield is still an objective gain over expense/hassle of animals.
SunRa I think you are right. Animals would add to the work and hassle, and a time/benefit analysis would be interesting to do. I didn’t make the point in the video very well, but I took the approach of making things quite easy.
But chicken manure - when fresh - is too potent for the plants and will kill them. You need to use chicken manure that's been aged at least a year.
However rabbits would be a nice alternative! Their manure is one of the best for plants
Also, between you, me and the lamp post; how many 'suggestions' or 'lessons' that are here, do you just simply not need? The whole world is a critic, huh? I love your humble personality. Its what keeps me LISTENING to your good advice.
There are a lot of suggestions out there! Sometimes I get tired of it, especially the repetitive ones, and the ones where people are essentially saying I am wrong, and need to do it the way they do it. Those can be frustrating. But there is learn gin in all of it for me.
Honest and informative as ever, your work in Ireland reaches far beyond the shores of the Emerald Isle and is very much appreciated her in the Highlands of Scotland. Whilst this is not something I will be applying in the immediate future it is something I've pondered upon at length in slowly developing our own Croft from scratch and trying to decide which systems might work here. Our two climate systems are not too dissimilar and so your videos are an endless source of instant reference to my planning and developing of our own land and farm.
I've considered similar, but removing the crop and composting it elsewhere, in almost a rotation of green manure crops to compost rotation. Fresh compost replacing the cut green manure over cardboard. This does not however allow for the intensity of growing you are achieving and I'm only able to consider it as I've focused heavily upon learning and developing livestock systems rather than crop systems at this stage.
Thank you once again for your continued excellent work and the support you provide to so many, through your courage to document the full spectrum from success to failure and for all the knowledge each graduation along the continuum provides to us all! 👍🏴
P. S. Loving the scythe, awesome. Was it a local purchase? I've just had about enough of the howl of the brush cutter this week and that looks SO much better.
Thanks for that great comment. It means a lot to know that my work, successes and failures are appreciated by others. It is fascinating to me that most of the viewers of my channel do not live in a climate even remotely like the one we share, and yet they seem to get a lot out of my work. i tis something that I always try to remember when I am doing the videos, that I should continually address the relevance of context.
One of the things that I learned from this process of growing a green manure is that the amount of compost that it would produce (if I took it away and composted it) would be surprisingly small - or compared to what I expected anyway. i did some measurements and calculations that I am planning to use in an upcoming video on the subject, but very basic estimates that I have done would indicate that it would only produce enough compost for 10-15mm thick layer over the garden beds - or about 1/2 an inch. This is something, but only about 1/4 of the amount I would have wanted to add. So I wonder if it was worth it from this perspective, thought there are other benefits of course.
Yeah, I'd much prefer to scythe, though it takes a lot longer to get skilled enough with the tool to do the job effectively.
Good luck with your own explorations!
I use a smaller hand held Japanese scythe to harvest lawn grass. Quiet efficiency.
Really well done but need some more air flow so put a fan in the mid
Your very candid about things that didn’t work out! I love that! Keep the great videos coming!
Thanks! I think things that don't go well are great opportunities for learning.
Thank you for your work and the refreshingly honest way you publish your work together with the thinking behind it and the results. I have used several of your projects on my plot. I have a small (100 sq m) plot in the South of the UK on very heavy clay. I think it could be used straight on a potters wheel.
This video is of particular interest to me as I have a bed in the sunniest portion of the plot which is not growing well. For the past two years, using a no dig approach, I have been improving the soil on other beds by sheet mulching over winter with a chopped mix of seaweed and leaves to a depth of about 20 cm and then adding a further 10 cm of home produced compost in spring about 3 weeks before I need each bed. The mulch is slow to decompose over winter but covering with compost in Spring after making sure the bed is well watered accelerates the process and seems to produce nutrient at the right time for seedlings when transplanted.
The problem bed has not responded as well to this treatment. It has been built from poor soil when I was levelling an area for shed and storage and also has a rain shadow from two trees that I am not allowed to remove. I would want to keep them anyway as local birds use them for perching and safe points when they are moving around the area.
I intend to remove a failing crop of onions and rest the bed until spring next year. I will plant it with green manure for the rest of the summer. Your observations on decomposition here are particularly relevant. I think I will plant a crop for the summer. Cut and sheet mulch early September then sow a winter crop late September to cut and add compost in March thus combining your experience with mine.
I don't get much from this bed anyway so it is a chance to experiment. That for me is part of the enjoyment.
Glad you found some value in my explorations, and thanks for the insights into your own issues. It is always interesting to hear about the success and struggles of other people. I have never growing in clay soil, and I understand that it can be challenging, but also very productive if it can be made to work. Best of luck with your experimentation!
excellent communication, thank you so much for sharing with us even if its more of a personal journal/experiment. 50 k views i bet more than me gained information without wasting precious time.
Thanks.
You are my favourite gardener on UA-cam. You go through the whole process. Failures along with the successes. I learn a lot from you. Keep up the great videos 👍
Ah, thanks!
I've used buckwheat as a green manure for a few times. It worked quite well plus you get plenty of seeds from it for the next year.
I used buckwheat a few years ago and should try it again. Haven't saved seeds though.
Friend,
This is a very balanced evaluation of the options you tried.
Since you have water available, best way to build organic matter quickly is to till the green manure into the soil just at anthesis, then water it so the decomposition will be achieved in a few days or max a week. You said it right the nitrogen was stuck in the green manure. Chopping with a scythe is the ideal way of notill. However even then moisture is the key, best till it back until you feel your soil is strong then do the chopping and dropping the green manure, which works in the long run with the slow release, both have their uses and importance. Great video and keep going.
Can you educate me on why using a scythe would help? Thanks.
Yes, water content to encourage ideal breakdown is key to whether you get aerobic or anaerobic reactions in the manure. Somewhere between a dry hay (pretty inert) and a fermenting silage (lactic from lactobacilli) remembering fermentation is much different to "wet rotting". The difference between sprinkling from above and hose seepage at ground level will also have made a difference... the leaves that you want to rot down are not actually being periodically wetted, are they? In a vertical heap, gravity removes excess water, but sitting on the ground, it may not be so easy. The mould on the ryegrass was likely due to lack of air currents. Many market gardeners install large roof fans to keep the air moving. Trouble is, this is all extra expense and this fellow is only growing seasonal tomatoes. Perhaps a crop of saffron tulips would make it an economical proposition? Commercially, the next step would probably be artificial lighting and heating to remove seasonal effects. (I jest; that's an insulated hangar space operation). A polytunnel is a semi closed system, rather like my large tropical fish tank, and the challenge is to avoid moulds, algae and fungi prospering when the heat and light are optimum in summer., as cucumber greenhouse owners know. Keeping the air movement inside the tunnel or glasshouse, whilst retaining the warm of the greenhouse effect, implies internal fans for many growers. That means electricity, so, first you build that wind turbine outside the polytunnel ... ;) I have long considered a polytunnel, but the advantages/drawbacks of vertical gardening/hydroponics/aquaponics, in terms of how much you can grow in a particular space, has yet to be resolved in my head. Kudos to this fellow who, in microcosm, is illustrating issues the whole world faces, to feed our burgeoning population. I tentatively agree that chickens or ducks might help, if you kennel a well fed e.g. German shepherd dog in with them, to deter the fox. This video has really got me thinking about a lot of issues, thank you for it. I'm subscribing.
Thank You! I love .your honesty and analytical approach. Your videos are a joy to watch and extremely useful.
Thanks! Glad you like my work!
Getting to no till seems like it is a several year process to me. I'm experimenting with composting in place with 1/3 of my rows right now. My winter cover crop was fava beans mainly with some daikon radish. 2/3 of the rows I cut the fava bean stalks and turned the soil over in april, put the stalks in my compost pile & left the fava roots in the soil, this was my 2nd year of cover cropping and pretty much revealed that my soil structure is getting much closer to being ready for another try at no till. I let 2 of the six rows of favas grow until june and cut the stalks down a couple weeks ago and added a layer of my compost with composting worms on top of the new green layer in the rows and then put fabric over the top. I watered everything well at that time. My plan is to replant fava beans in all my rows again this year with some daikon, but I will alternate the rows that I let the fava beans grow until june. This way every three years each of my rows will get a nice addition of my compost with worms. I generate about 3 yards of compost a year, and have probably been buying about an additional 3-5 yards a year. My soil started as almost pure clay / hard pan and this is overall year 4 of improving the soil structure with compost and cover crop. Since this was my first time doing it at this scale (2500 square feet) I think the entire process could have been done in 2 years, but would have required me to aggressively add sand & perlite to the soil in addition to compost. It has been a good learning experience and I will know next time how to improve the soil much quicker. This fall I will try to grow my cover crops in the 2 beds that are resting now with minimal to no tilling. I'm hoping the worms do their job and this 3 year rotation will keep them fed well enough to hang around in the rows I am adding them to.
Thanks so much for detailing your experience, which all sounds very interesting. i have never grown in hard clay, so it is fascinating to me how different it needs to be approached compared to my sandy loam soil.
The combination of java beans and diakon sounds like a good mix, and it is great that you have invested the time in building up your soil structure and fertility. i wish I had done that when I started, and now I am trying to catch up.
have you tried using home made compost teas?
I did no till the first year here in the US in zone 8a by allowing tall fescue to grow very tall during the summer and then cut several times to allow the roots to penetrate the clay and decay. It really increased soil carbon and workability. I should have done daikon radish over the winter and I'm preparing another fescue plot now in a very rocky area so I will be seeding the daikon about sept-oct.
@Dongs , this is some advice i will try for sure. I have multiple large conifers in my yard. I can put some of the branches that come down in wind storms into a pile, and am planning on having someone out to assess and trim some of the lower branches off of some of the trees. I have 6 or 7 trees that are well over 50' tall and some are a bit overcrowded. I guess when I get the tree service out I will have them chip everything and leave it on site.
@@ryanpalmer2483 I started brewing compost tea this season in a 55 gallon drum. I've done 4 batches this season about to start the 5th. I'm using kelp from vital garden supply and down to earth, vital garden supply's fish emulsion, bio ag's full humix. I'm sure it is doing something, but I haven't really been foliar spraying. Distributing a 55gallon drum with a 2 gallon watering can takes a bit of time. I've had a very low presence of insect pests this year so far. Cover cropping and perennial flowers seems to help attract the right kind of bugs to decrease pest populations. I do have some beet leafminers on my chard, and I've sprayed neem on those a couple of times and remove the bad leaves, no aphids so far this year, which have been a problem in the past, but they usually come a bit later in the season, and slugs I've learned to treat with sluggo when I put my new plants in the garden or seeds are starting to emerge. I still have slugs, but they don't affect mature plants they way they do the little guys. Leaving the 2 of six rows of cover crop intact until June was also a part of my pest management strategy, but I can't really tell exactly how much that helped. I figured leave something big for the snails and slugs, because if I cut it all down at once the only place they will have to go is for the babies. Seems reasonable right?
This is the best gardening channel on UA-cam
Yay!
Here here. I totally agree.
Hello,
I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your videos! Once i found them, I systematically watched every single one, then shared them with all my friends, family and anyone I meet that likes to grow. The style of editing, the amount of information, your skill and knowledge, just your basic premise for the videos in general, are all amazing.
I don't have any growing space, due to living in the city, but I have been commandeering pieces of my parents farm to grow food and conduct similar experiments myself. I recently used your turning sod method (combined with a few others) to turn and create a new 60 square metre bed. My climate is basically the opposite to yours, but it is amazing how many lessons apply to both of us. Super excited to see what I can learn from you next!
If I'm ever in Ireland, I'll make sure to come and donate a day of my labour to say THANK YOU! Keep up the great work.
Wow, thanks! I wonder how may people have seen all of my videos, that is a lot of watching!
Interesting to hear that you tried out the lazy bed method. Hope all of it works out for you and that you have a hugely successful garden!
I always enjoy your very informative and well spoken videos. You definitely do your share of research and you are a hard working person. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us gardeners!
Thanks for the supportive comment. It means a lot to me.
The eloquent way you speak, the admiribility of the RED Gardens project, and also the way you think outside of the box brings an air of comfort to your videos.
I only just recently found-out about this project, but I am already loyally devoted to it.
Thanks. Really glad you found it.
@@REDGardens Do you have any videos more based on soil biology, with the worms and slugs, much like your rat video?
Not yet. It is an area that I don't have a lot of experience with, but hope to explore more soon.
Your experiments are very helpful to me. Am learning to grow food by trial and error in a no dig organic garden. Copying what I witnessed at a Rudolph Steiner garden, I started with mustard plants which nourish the soil. Was planning to dig them in later, but then discovered that they were good, nourishing eating so ate my way through it and let some go to seed to start again as another food crop. It was a Japanese red mustard.
Hey mate, ventilation is one of the most important things in the poly tunnel, I get the “no dig” idea but you know it’s better to learn from others mistakes then to make them for yourself, and hind sight is 20/20.
I think windbreakers of sorghum or another tall growing green grown in grid formation across your property with green manure ground covers, you can chop and drop and turn the windbreak into a composted windrow, grow it through the summer then cut it down layering it with dirt to make a compost ready to spread out into your garden beds the following season, if your not going to dig then you need to create a fuckton of friable soil with donated green waste eg lawn clippings and wood chips, composting and worms.
A small walk behind tractor with a power Harrow or rotary tiller to turn the compost windrows even a cheap Chinese one will do, dedicate a section for making soils along with the composted windbreak/row idea to improve soil
Yeah, ventilation is the key, I just left the end door shut for a while and forgot about it.
Interesting suggestions about generating compost. Something I need to find the time to do a lot more of.
I have been watching your videos for well over a year now, and this one was particularly interesting. Your videos have always been informative, full stop. Lots of info for those prepared to watch it all to the end. But in this one you have made huge leaps towards the filmatic and entertainment part of it all. Kudos. I enjoy what you show, one day I hope to be able to support you as well. Thank you.
Thanks so much for that comment. it is nice to know that people watch a lot fo my videos, and get a lot out of them, and that I may be getting better at it! Great feedback to contemplate as I plan the next few videos. And thanks for even considering supporting me and my work!
Thanks for sharing your experiment and it's out come. I use rye and buckwheat anong with other things like field peas, oats and trical. They all have their benefit to add to the ground. With what you show planted I would have chopped the crop when it was most valuable and that is in the 8" to 10" range. If you were to have chopped it then and left it to regrow in that tunnel I bet you would have had to to three cutting. Leaving the crop go to the "wood" stage takes a long time to break down and compost. I'm glad to see someone trying new ideas and experimenting. I have learnt something from this, thanks and thanks for allowing me to share my 2 cents.
I think I agree with you about chopping down at that stage. It owed definitely have helped speed up the transition to a following crop. It will be really interesting to see how long it takes for the 'woody' hay to decompose on the surface.
Hello, im thankfull for Your videos, You show us that we need to experiment at our own in our gardens :) Wish You all the best ! Greetings from Poland :)
I'm a new subscriber. Interesting approach and picking up a lot of tips for our own self sufficiency operation. I like the absence of intrusive music and flash graphics. Keep it up. Thanks.
thanks for the feedback. I prefer to keep my videos simple, and glad that others appreciate it.
good job in explaining what you're doing in your garden. Thank you for taking the time and making the effort.
A single row crimping wheel would work well for doing the damage to the greens. A powered reel mower does the job very quickly too. I would suggest doing beans as a green fertility.
I haven't tried a crimper yet.
and can eat the beans too,tremendous idea.
I've learn so much about compositing etc from just watching these videos.
Suggesting you use a cordless hedge trimmer zip tied to a steel rake with the rake head upside down to cradle the trimmer. It should allow your crop to fall down neatly in place . I got this idea from the I am organic gardening channel. Keep up the good work. Your content and insights are valuable!! Cheers from NJ
Informative, may consider this as my greenhouse suffers much the same. Nice one Bruce
Thanks. Glad you found it useful, and good luck with your explorations.
cover crop works insanely well
I did it in all my pots, and the gains compared to the previous year were nuts. I had zero diseased plants and zero yellowing of any plant, even my tomatoes until the season was fully over.
Pretty nuts lol, because I had to apply really minimal fertilizer. year prior i had cracked vegetables, a bit of disease, etc and less yield.
His command of language is amazing. Greetings to you from Bowling Green, Kentucky.
I enjoy the fact that you are willing to try to different gardening methods.
Thanks. I try to be careful and concise about what I say, as I realise that so many people who watch my channel are not native english speakers. Hello there in Kentucky - a very different climate to the one I grow in!
@@REDGardens Southern Kentucky is in climate zone 6B. Most people probably don't realize that most of England is in the same growth zone as northern Florida. That's difficult to believe, but true. Your temp. variance between summer and winter is SO much less than mine. We can be zero in the winter and 105 in the summer.
derek a It is fascinating how temperate our climate is around here, a benefit of the Gulf Stream! Over here in the midlands of Ireland we are quite a bit cooler in the summer, with more rain and wind.
@@REDGardens I live about 65 miles north of Nashville; what I affectionately call NashVegas. Anywho, our summers are hot, humid. Right now, I'm receiving a light rain shower. After this has finished, the humidity level will skyrocket.
Am also dealing with poor/ clay soils. Thanks for the info. Liked and comment for algorithm....
Thanks!
get a belly dump full of compost for like 200$ lol
It takes four acres to provide the needs of one human. I have one acre that is 1500 square feet of garden beds and 3100 square feet of meadow. The meadow contains every native plant in the area and then some.
I mow the meadow and put the clippings on the garden area as mulch.
This family feeds themselves and sells the excess produce to area restaurants on 1/10th of an acre of land: ua-cam.com/video/NCmTJkZy0rM/v-deo.html
That sounds like an appropriate balance between area for growing and area for building fertility.
how do you know?
@@voidremoved it is the consensus of the scientists that calculate those things.
I have this idea that you need 2-3 times the area of your garden to produce the compost and fertility of a really intensive//productive garden.
I learned a new gardening technique: Green-manure.
Thanks for the Informitive video!
Glad you found it valuable.
I really enjoy watching your videos. Your presentation style is really great 👍Thank you for sharing your knowledge and discoveries with us🙂
Thanks. Glad you like my videos!
You are right in the slow release and not having instant fertility. Discing it in first year really helps
I am fascinated by the idea of cut drops. So this year I am going to be trying some crimson clover and some buckwheat.
Have fun with your explorations, it isi such an interesting area of growing.
HARD HARD work! And hard lessons. I admire your determination, persistence, and appreciate your sharing - quality video :)
Thanks. Though it wasn't so hard. The toughest part was scything the growth, which only took me 1.5 hours, of careful work, and I enjoy scything. The rest of it was fairly easy, and easier than hauling in lots of wheelbarrow loads of compost, or even turning that much compost. I see this method as an easier option.
Perfect timing with this one. My first green manure crop (30" bed, 25' long) is about knee high. Thank you so, so much for this video.
Great. Glad it was valuable to you.
I love your way to explain! You have a very scientific and practical approach! Thank you! i'm learning every day something new!
Thanks for these really practical videos. I've been cover-cropping and composting intensively in a large garden for ~15 years. The plant health is always wonderful, but the weed situation is is a big time suck and hurts yields. It's interesting to see how people do this on a large / commercial scale, where there is a greater need for results - sometimes at the expense of the long-term soil quality.
I think your approach is totally on the mark - grow carbon, let plants do the work, use your sheeting to suppress weeds passively, etc. If you don't want to dig in the green manure it's pretty effective to "top dress" it with a layer of compost or manure. It's like composting in situ, and having some airflow by treating the ground like a compost pile rather than burying everything is helpful.
Thanks for the comments, and encouragement. i think I agree with you that top dressing the cut biomass with compost would have been a better thing to do.
I was going to mention the same technique of applying a layer of compost on top of your green manure especially if you intend on planting shortly after the cutting. Once that is all covered wth your weed supressing material your following crops will be quite happy.
@@REDGardens I do wonder (as you mentioned in the video) how much total biomass you'd get from periodic mowing vs. letting a cover crop mature fully. Some covers like Buckwheat are fast-growing and easy to uproot, but grasses, alfalfa, etc. are so deep-rooted that it might be beneficial to stress the plants so they focus their energy on growing foliage rather than roots. Keep up the great work - you're living the dream!
Iron John It would be really interesting to do side by side studies, but I seem to continually be adding new things to explore, and new questions with every experiment. The potential for knowledge and exploration seems exponential ;-)
Another commenter had suggested that there could be an optimal height to cut back the growth. Cutting back too low will leave very little green leaf to regrow from, but leaving a healthy height, would allow faster regrowth and larger amount of total biomass.
i'm not a farmer and think your videos are great, keep up the good work
Thanks.
Great video. I think you nailed it. Green manure takes a year to be a benefit. The first year you need to overcome the nutrition loss.
Thanks. Yeah, it is a good option if you have the space and time. For those of us who have easier access to money/resources to buy in fertility, than we have extra space and time, green manures may not be a useful option.
It was worth it to plant the green manure. Other quick fixes won't last you years to come. Just keep doing that se thing with the little alterations you mentioned an its bound to do wonders for the soil amd future crops! Thank you for doing what you do and sharing it.
Thanks. Not sure if the benefits in this case outweigh the loss of potential growing space for the time the green manure is growing. I'm not sure about the balance with doing this.
Damn you just have to love a mad scientist!!!
lol
Well. live and learn and it looks like it was a labor of love. Cheers from Ottawa, Canada.
Thanks! It has been a long time since I was in Ottawa, but used to spend some summers south of Ottawa in the river.
I think some of the mildew problems would definitely be fixed my increased airflow. consider roll up sides? fans? love all the content brother. that cover crop was beautiful
Thanks! It was such a beautiful crop. For the ventilation, I just didn't open the end vents enough. With the wind we get around here it would have ventilated quite well - a rookie mistake.
@@REDGardens it is all about learning!!! I appreciate the videos and that you share the knowledge with others so hopefully some mistakes can be avoided.
Worms which aid in decomposition (not earthworms) produce liquid fertiliser which has anti fungal and anti insect (think aphids!) properties.
Brown.. (wood chips) will tie up nitrogen as they decompose.... and will draw it from elsewhere (your soil)... I used to throw ammonium nitrate on my chip piles for much faster decomposition.... excellent informative... well presented... ^5... great job
Only on the surface will wood chips tie up nitrogen. That's why it's important to not incorporate them into the soil. The wood chips he put down didn't cause the N deficiency in the tomato plants.
Organics is so interesting I'm happy to keep following this project. Building soil is a bear
Thanks!
Hooray someone exploring the benefits of Green Manure. Great video and hopefully you will turn people onto this beneficial way of growing. Very interested in your trials and experiments and the thorough way you work through problems to get a solution. I will try and email you my own pathetically small trials of using Winter Tares.
Thanks. It is such a fascinating area of exploration.
Awesome as usual. Thanks for doing these experiments and sharing your results. Invaluable knowledge
Thanks!
Decomposition causes nitrogen knockdown so if you fix this short term problem you'll end up with too much nitrogen later on. Also the tilling and soil disturbance is not what soil organisms like at all, especially earth worms. Try not digging and leaving the materials on the surface as a mulch and habitat for soil biota. Great work, I enjoyed the video heaps.
very true,if I do dig I use fork so dont chop up earth worms
In my polytunnels I dig in home made compost primarily made of grass clippings, leaves and manure early in the growing season around February.
Having two horses helps.
I'll let this sit until I plant my tomatoes in early May.
When planting I will sprinkle a little NPK fertiliser and extra compost in the bottom of the planting hole.
I do this for both tomatoes and peppers.
Everything else I plant in raised beds outside except potatoes which I do in traditional drills.
I would not recommend sprinkle from above watering as it encourages fungus and mould.
Infact I removed my overheads and now water directly onto the base of the stem with a watering can
Having a couple of courses would definitely help, as well as giving the time to allow things to be absorbed in tot he soil before planting.
I think I agree with you about the sprinkler system, especially with tomatoes, but I found it quite useful with the overwintering and spring crops.
Excellent, excellent information! Thank you so very, much! This is a lesson for me also. I tried no till this year and I found less weeds but less growth. Likely for the same reason as yours; nitrogen lacking in the soil from the plants consuming it last year. I will try the remedies you’ve suggested here! We’re all in this together.
Thanks. Keeping up on the nitrogen is a definite issue for us growers!
I have used lawn grass and ornamentals as green manure in my organic raised bed garden for twenty years. I layer compost over and around plants to conserve moisture. An overhead sprinkler would improve growth and improve your efficiency. I have grown hemp grass with great effect. The roots penetrate deeply and enrich the soil and the stalks break down when placed between rows. Good luck.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The more I look into this, the more I realise how any different plants can be used.
It’s interesting to watch someone grow in well aggregated soil. I live in Georgia, in the US, and here, we have red clay. It’s easy for me to be jealous of your well-draining soil, but I notice that it’s harder for your plants to uptake nutrients than mine. Something I always keep in mind when I’m watching your videos is “which soil type is better?”
I would love to have the experience of growing in clay, as I hear that it is such a different type of soil, which needs different management. I would love to compare the pros and cons of each.
Great information. Thank you.
:-)
I like the idea of mowing more frequently. It may have also encouraged more growth overall. I also liked the suggestion by another commenter about adding worms. I have a red wriggler compost system and it can be surprising how quickly they break things down. Perhaps growing a worm colony separately in a container over the same period and then spreading them over the area just before covering with the black fabric for a few weeks so they have plenty to work on and don't flee as quickly. I have heard/read that red wigglers don't stick around after their job is done, so keeping them fed is important, but they also breed pretty quickly, so getting them to fill a large container over winter shouldn't be too hard.
I think you are right that adding worms would help. My neighbour had a really good colony of worms in a bin, and I could have used those, but they were destroyed in the fire.
Earthworms are just fantastic for decomposing plant material and improving soil structure. Don't think you can ever have enough of them.
@@REDGardens Those worms have layed their eggs in most of the soil before. You don't need to add them seperately. They are already there. If not, just throw some hands of composted soil in. In the beginning bacteria is starting the composting process anyway. When the decomposition of the material is mostly done then the worms move in and finish the job. With all the plants only roughly cut it is most important to have moisture underneath the fabric and it must be compressed fairly well by trampling on it to avoid dry air pockets. For the worms need that slicky moist environment. Compare to Charles Dowding's books. Thanx for your great channel. Greetings from Germany!
Garden worms are unseen miracle workers.
I think the point about having moist and compacted material is an important one that, which I didn't do with a lot of the material.
What I personally do is after i cut the grass in my back yard, I layer cocoa shell, sugar cane and wood chip mulch on top of the cut green manure (cut grass). I personally feel this brings more nutrients into the soil and speeds up the decomposition! I then put a lot of kitchen scraps into the soil such as banana peels. This happens weeks before i plant my crop.
And then when spring time comes, the soil is prepared for me to transplant my indoor corn seedlings.
Sounds interesting - I am guessing you live in a warm climate, so the decomposition will be quite quick.
@@REDGardens No, I live in London which seems to be a little warmer, but this method works best in spring/ summer compared to the colder months of autumn/winter.
Great video, yes I agree the environment and air movement could he a reason for the mould.
Thanks. Likely.
Grow algaes for fertilizer, switch to legumes as the cover crop, use multiple species. Use the road of least resistance
Love it , I'm try different ways in pop noodle pots , they love crushed egg shell and seaweed , last year I did milk cartons , noodle pots fix nice but it's getting the organic juice right. Got worm farms but they need up grading ,
Chop down the green manure sooner and more often. Apply compost teas and apply humics/fulvics to aid bresk down along with enzymes
Thank you for your analysis. I have used this method and like it especially when starting in the fall.
Thanks. How do you incorporate it into the soil?
A very honest report and that's the reason I really liked it. Good for you. Thanks for sharing your valuable experience. Have subscribed already. Greetings from Cancun, Mexico.
Thanks. So wonderful to know that people as far away as Mexico appreciate my efforts, and honesty.
Let me tell you, Red Gardens, I have great respect for people who work with their hands, intelligence, patience, care, perseverance... I live in the tropics and growing challenges are somewhat different. But your approach and experimentation attitudes are valued by me. And I know, "It's a long way to Tipperary!" but, then again, ...isn't it wonderful that technology allows us to communicate nevertheless?... Best wishes, to you and your countrypeople... from Mexico. Carry on.
Diana Westrup It is so wonderful to be able to use the technology, to share with people around the world.
Do you still have the hens, or access to some ducks? Poultry are great for knocking down tall stands of cover crops and breaking up the plants either before or after cutting. I use my hens for this type of clearing, and they make short work of it with minimal effort for me.
Duck will trample down what they don't eat and a extra shot of nitrogen
Supplement feeding at one end of hoop house and water at other ensures lots of walking around
Duck eggs are prized by Bakeries add a portable Duck coop at one end Ducks tend to lay in the earliy morning so let them out middle to late morning so you have a chance to collect the eggs
I had a batch of 14 hens that I was contemplating to putting into the polytunnel to have a go over the green manure. But then a few weeks before I was going to let them in, a fox or pine martin or some other predator killed them all, and took that option away from me.
@@REDGardens That's terrible. You had a lovely flock of hens.
@Coen Yeah, it was a shame to lose them.
@@REDGardens 😖
I love your spirit of experimentation in order to better learn how to grow crops in a non tillage green manure system. Masanoubu Fukuoka would be proud.
Thanks.
This is a great idea and I am sure it really works. I always noticed that the new areas where I expanded my garden, which were areas where I simply tilled sod over in late winter, produced much better on the first year that subsequent years. I plan on doing a winter cover crop after 3 years or so of growing. My plan is to sow the seeds in September, with the garden plants still there. Then remove the crop plants once the seeds start growing. This should allow them to grow enough to be turned over in late march or so. We'll see.
Gardens often do much better in the first season, due to the release of the fertility in the sod. Growing a green manure, should be a reasonable substitute. Hope it works out well for you.
The more often you grow the cover crop the faster the residue will break down because the biology in the soil will get better and more active.
I have used, peas, clovers, vetch, fava beans, rye, oats, sunflowers, Mustard Greens, daikon radishes, and buckwheat.
Mustard Greens can be a good cover crop as it breaks down adds a natural fungicide.... might help to control molds.
My tomatoes and green beans do great after mustard greens
Daikon Radish is a natural tiller as the radishes go down 12-18". Kale, chards, radishes, beets, chives, parsley and Peppers seemed to do reslly well here.
Buckwheat and sunflowers were great for squash and pumpkins..
Just my observations for my small plot in Northern California.
Cheers
Thanks for the sharing your experiences. I have started to is some of the brassica greens as a hybrid crop and green manure. I harvest for a bit then let grow until almost flowering, then chop it into the soil. Seems to work well, but haven’t done any comparisons. The mustards are interesting as they can be so vigorous, and seem very quick to decompose.
Wonderful, very informative. Thank You. Also love all the amazing comments.
Thanks. I agree that there are some amazing comments on my channel. Some very interesting and thoughtful people out there!
I’d have flung open the doors almost all the time I think. The whole concept of a cover crop to feed the soil is counter intuitive- the plants extract nutrients. Plus I think the theory is to dig it in which goes against the no-dig thing which I favour too. Nice video!
Yes, they extract nutrients, often from very deep in the soil, but then they release them again into the topsoil, along with a lot of organic matter for the soil life.
like your "trial and error" videos, might i make a suggestion. Try putting chickens in your polytunnel during vinter and early spring, they will feed on your green plants and quickly put tons of fertillity in your soil. They are also a great help in the garden to kill of weeds, so if you have an area which you wanna use for growing, you can start a year earlier with having chickens clean it for you and at the same time enrich the ground.
I was thinking putting in my batch of hens about midway through the growth of this green manure, for all the reasons you suggest, but a fox or other predator took that option away from me! It would have been really interesting to see what they would have done with it all.
Ah bad luck then :), dont give up on the idea thou, it can great reduce the amount of work needed when starting a new growing bed on a poor soil, according to my experience ofc. If you walk into a "normal" chicken coop and look at the soil in there the 1st 30 cm is packed with worms and life.
Another solid video.
I'm really glad to have come across your channel. Thanks for what you do!
Ohio fan
@0:58-1:03, "...there was fire...I took the opportunity...".This is the kind of mindset I need to develop.
There were a few more emotions in-between but was glad to end up with that attitude!
Putting Tip on the map. Well done
:)
was really cool to see the learnings you got from this. Thank you for sharing your experiences!
Thanks, glad you liked it.
If only my other crops grew as well and as independently as green manure. That would be heaven!
Yeah, I also hope my crops grow as well as this green manure did!
Very nice presentation. Thank you
As far as I know the nitrogen deficiency was due to transplanting the tomatoes in the same time while the Green manure was decomposing. All of the bacteria from the soil moved to the manure to decompose it and it did not feed the tomatoes the nitrogen it needed. In convencional farming you can only solve this by ading UREA or some other fast nitrogen fertilizer.
I had thought that leaving the green manure on top of the surface of the soil would reduce the immobilisation of available nitrogen in the process of decomposition, but perhaps there was still a lot of it with the root systems and small amount of items that I had chopped up in each planting station.
Great video. thanks for posting.
I noticed you have big land, how about planting fast growing plants outside and compost them? Then put the compost on top of your garden. Also getting from outside sources of compostable materials (manures, autumn leaves, hays, wood chips, etc) can help speed up your process of building up your soil.
Your suggestion makes a lot of sense, I just haven't had the spare capacity in the past year or so to do that work. It is something that I need to start to do a lot more of.
@@REDGardens I'm interested in this too. Would appreciate anyone's suggestions of suitable "crops" to grow for composting.
Am 70 years old and gardening since boy and still never thought this great idea
i read lots of comments here and many are very useful, especially for you.
if you can access free wood chips, arborist chips is the best, get them. when it comes to what plant for composting it would depends on your zone. low maintenance, fast growing tall grasses planted somewhere on your property. try jerusalem artichoke, comfrey (though comfrey needs water), legumes.
Found your channel from a recommendation, and watched every upload in about 5 days. Can't wait for more uploads!
Woah, all 54 of them! That is a lot of watching me talk! Thanks for watching!
I agree; it takes a while to see the benefits of planting cover crops.
And I find it hard to quantify what benefit there is as I am also adding compost and other fertility. So I really can't say how much of an impact it had in this case.
Love this video thank you. Am considering establishing green manure first in a few fields. Regarding your nitrogen loss. Why not introduce more legume family and heavy nitrigen fixers? White / dutch clover
I added a lot of nitrogen at the start of the growth, so I don't think it was that there was not enough available. Only that it hadn't started to be released yet. i think this would also apply with the legume family crops. They might fix nitrogen, but I still think that it wouldn't be available to the tomatoes until the vegetation or root nodules decomposed.
With a setup like that, a simple weighted roller could be just the ticket for compacting that bed.
I imagine that would work.
@@REDGardens As well, if your goal is to reduce the size of the fragments, which would speed up their decomposition due to increased surface area, you can weld some angle-iron cutting tabs onto the roller itself to chop that forage up.
That was really useful, thank you! It explains some of the problems I've been having with green manures vs crops. Perhaps growing legumes as the follow-on crop would give it time to break down, since they'll collect their own nitrogen? So sorry to hear about your fire damage!
The nitrogen deficiency only lasted a few weeks, then the plants seemed to have as much as they needed. cutting or digging in the material a few weeks earlier would have sorted it.
I think that you might be on to something with the idea for using a lawnmower. I worked at a golf course for about a decade and something important I learned was that you need to pay attention to the height of the cut, and how much you are removing when you do cut. For instance, for optimal no-maintenance grass growth you want to keep it 3 inches tall and remove no more that 20% of the grasses total height, and this carries over to other plants as well (relatively of course). I'd suggest figuring out a way to run a lawn mower over it at 6 inches tall or taller if possible--though most mowers are designed to cut short so this may be tricky--and if possible only cut off a couple inches at a time. I think if your plants are at least 6 inches tall they will still gather enough sunlight for decent growth while keeping a steady amount of material building up in a fine light layer on the ground for decomposition.
I wonder about growing green manure specifically to be composted, more time and steps involved and it might not be best for this situation, but it seems like that's what you really need--a steady source of finished compost. I think you mentioned before that you can't get your hands on all the compost you'd like.
Anyway just a thought. Thanks for another interesting video!
I've allowed grass to grow tall and therefore grow a large root system before cutting it down. I use a rotary mower with a side discharge and run it over whilst tilting it so the front wheels are in the air. This lets it cope with tall grass. By the third pass you can allow it to run flat as normal. Sort of imitating a mob grazing system.
@souptoaster I think you are on to something really interesting. I have wondered about the issue of cutting, and how much to remove at any one time so that you can optimise the production of biomass. And on the other hand there is the issue of the relationship between the height of growth and the depth of roots as @John Harrison suggests. it is a complex system with the interplay between the behaviour of the different plants and how they respond to being cut, and the option of the tools and time available to manage it all. With my first try, I took the easy option of the single cut at the end, but not convinced that it is the best approach for my context.
@@johnharrison1743 - I'm inspired by the same thing, trading a cow for a push mower. As you say development of a large root system is key to the process.
@@REDGardens - Therein lies the rub, a single cut is the most effective for your time management while more frequent cutting would probably be better but also take up time that you may need to spend elsewhere in the garden. I think the most effective solution would be to invent a 36 hour day! Barring that, it seems like yet another experiment has been added to your project.
@@mrJMD Yep, a balance between the amount of time I want to spend (or can spend) vs the effectiveness of the cover crop vs how my management impacts the following crop. I took the easy way on a lot of this and suffered a bit. But in the end it would have been easier to just add some liquid feed while transplanting than to spend the time digging it in or fussing about the method. Having finished the video, I now realise that I didn't mention that I was interested in exploring the easy way of doing things.
If I had a sprinkler system, cut the green manure down a week or two before transplanting, and then liquid fed a few times during and after transplanting the tomatoes, it would have been the simplest and easiest variation of what I did, perhaps.
You have shown an excellent spectrum of teaching skills in your videos. Keep your good work up.
When it comes down to life in the soil, I love to spade with my spading fork. It brings green matter a few inch deeper for decomposition under more humid conditions, it's spreading nutrients better, improves aeration of the soil - oxygen and water are both vital for decomposition, excess rainwater is drained off faster, it tears and breaks roots of unwanted weeds and it is worm friendly.
After the work is done, you have a better understanding of the living conditions in your soil.
Thanks. Like you, I also like using my spade in the gardens, and I went against my normal preference/practices in this case, as iI have been investigating the possible benefits of no-dig or min-till approaches.
That was lots of effort. Thank you for instructing and sharing what you have learned. Best wishes from Arkansas !
Thanks - all the way over in Arkansas!
Your channel is about to skyrocket
Hope so!
Wow....a lot of work.... so glad I started with MEL’s mix from the Square foot garden book!
Buying in a mix can be an easy way to start. In my case it would be a hell of a lot more work hauling all that material in and spreading it around for a space this size, than it was to process this material.
I’ve grown bumper crops to build soil structure in hay fields. I have a 20’ flail mower but the best results were when I rented a 10’ weighted roller. Farmers do this in western USA. So I don’t flail the growth anymore. If you do this again, I’d rent a sod roller to bend and push down the growth. My roller has spikes but you just need a few passes to smash it down good. I think you just waited to late to mine the nutrients before planting. A side note on growing tomato’s, the best results I’ve had are growing in rich manure. I don’t even mix it with soil, I did a hole, fill it with manure and plant. In the US, we have a refined product called Black Kow, you probably have a similar product. Tomato plants LOVE the richness of this manure. I also cut nearly all the stems except just a few on the plant tops to bury the majority of the tomato plant stem underground. All those little hairs become a massive root system. You want just the leafy top to poke out and 15-30” of stem buried. That massive root structure yields 5x more fruit and builds a much stronger healthier plant. If you have access to herbicide like GrazeOn (I’m sure it’s in Ireland) you can spray bumper crops to kill the weeds to the root, but it won’t kill forage grasses which you have in that mix. It will kill the clover however.
Thanks for the suggestion about the roller, sounds like it could do the job. I have planted tomatoes in the past like that, but have wondered about the fact that the existing rootball is so far down when los tof the fertility is in the top layers of the soil. It sounds like another experiment or trial is needed!
reinventing agriculture
Great vid 👍. You’re a good teacher. Thank you
thanks!
I agree with the multiple chops as the cover crop grows. I'm hoping to try something similar
I think even one additional cut would have made a difference.
I appreciate you taking the time to do this, what little time and experience I have with cover crop, is it really all come down to time, I think most want this to be some big thing the first year but of course nothing on this planet works like that and it want for us either but like all natural things will as time goes own, I'd almost say a field done like this one year own one year off would over a 5 year period give the kind of results that we all look for but noticing that thats a tall order for most because a field sitting isnt producing and who has enough field to just sit for a years and still make money as I'm talking about farms and farmer's, even someone with 10,000 acre fields still have their operations set up for the use of every acre so I understand why that wouldn't be practical, I do like and think to some point and size that permaculture farming, even gardening is a healthier way to go for us the people and the planet in whole, doing these kind of experiments will I'm sure in time teach us valuable lessons on a better way and possibly a quicker alternative to revitalizing the ground and growing healthier crops, of course their will always be money disrupted in the world and those that would fight against things like iy has been done from the beginning of time, learning to do something one way takes away from the ones that supply another way and bout goes own which gives us a healthy economy as will, so all win, I'm not sure in your country but I'm thinking and believe there already are some government funding goingbown in this type of growing practices and will only get better so this is the time to get into this type of farming especially for the up and coming new farmers of the world, thanks again
Thanks for your comments, I generally agree with all that you have said. A lot of it does come down to time, and the ability to 'afford' to let land produce for itself. Yep, things are changing.