If you found this video helpful, please *LIKE* it and share it to help spread its reach! Thanks for watching 😊 TIMESTAMPS here: 0:00 Benefits Of Composting Weeds 1:16 Fill Raised Garden Beds Cheaper 4:58 Do Not Compost These Weeds 5:35 Filling Raised Beds With Weeds And Kitchen Scraps 7:33 Using Weeds As Fertilizer 8:29 Adventures With Dale
Happy to say filling beds is not a problem for me. Every year i have all the manure and hay from the horse,goats and chickens into a big pile let it work off and fill or top of beds .
Family has properly on the Virginia Carolina line, planning on restarting the old homestead and use the overgrowth to my advantage. Its all old farmland anyways
I got two new metal raised bed this year for the garden. They’re 8x4x2. It’s humongous. But, it’s tall and good on my back. I cleaned the yard up and just pile every dead plants and clippings and filled the beds. It’s going to take a good while to fill them up.
When I originally built my raised bed garden, I just bought my house and was totally broke, so I made the most affordable beds possible. They worked for the time being, but seeing a side-by-side comparison, it's not even close how much better the double-stacked beds are. If you can afford the extra height, it is worth every penny.
I have an 8ft by 3ft raised bed every time I remove dead or dying leaves I remove them and throw them on top of my bed and let them break down in the soil, my soil health was eventually so good I had mushrooms popping up in my bed in Phoenix during the summer, definitely recommend chop and drop 👍
That is a good idea when your bed is not in use. Covering your soil when nothing is growing in it is imperative. The sun can do a lot of damage to unprotected soil, especially if plants are not currently growing in it.
Great use of the plants that always survive winter, weeds. Everything else is dormant and brown, yet I have dandelions green as spring thinking their cabbage 😂
Dale is so cute. I really enjoy the Adventures with Dale outros. Good point on the invasive debris. I have accidentally spread horseradish into another raised bed this way. Still get it popping up every week despite removing it promptly when it does. 😅
I'm glad to hear it! Dale is great on camera. It's like he knows what to do. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was growing sweet potatoes in a raised bed. They have been coming back every year for 4 years 😄 Some things shouldn't be buried.
Great vid. Always learn something. Thank you for this. My husband & I made & painted [4] 3' x 7' x 18" high beds last year with 2x4 over head to string up beans, 🍅, squash, zucchini, etc... [best use off 10' lumber - no scraps left]. We put plastic down in the entire bed, put in about 5" over existing river rock from previous home owners pool we got rid of, put yard fabric over that, then filled with dirt, compost. Ran a 1" or 3/4" x 7-10" PVC pipe out as water overflow is about 4-5" from the bottom of bed. Also had 12" or so black perforated drain pipe down through dirt to rock. I put my water hose in this & watered about every 3-5 days to fill the bottom of the bed. Worked pretty well until it got really hot, then I hand watered every other day with water hose from the top. This year we are adding another 3 beds & burying a water line for automatic scheduled on/off watering. The yard fabric I used was very thick, like what you have on the ground around your beds. I don’t think this allowed roots to reach through the fabric for water too much. This year, I'm going to use a much thinner & cheaper landscaping fabric & will also set them up with top watering. We just last week gott warm enough to melt ice & snow here. I'm praying my blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, Jerusalem Artichokes, & asparagus made it through the winter. All covered with lots of straw. What do you think about them. Temps in single digits 2-3 nights along with a few weeks of 20's - 32⁰ nights. Fingers crossed 🤞. Handsome Harry, aka Dandy Dale was looking for pets & as every fur baby, treats. But it's good to see your are a good pet parent by keeping his weight down. Over weights dogs live on average 2-4 less years than dogs trimmed down to weight given by vets. Give him a hug 4 me. God bless ❤❤❤❤
Blueberries and asparagus are Zone 3/4 hardy. Raspberries are Zone 4/5 hardy. Blackberries are zone 5/6 hardy. Single digit temps are nothing to them. They all tolerate cold well below zero. You can grow blueberries and raspberries in Minneapolis. They'll do just fine. Here in Zone 8, my blueberries, blackberries and strawberries don't even get fully defoliated. Even with all the ice, snow and temps in the teens we have, I still have a bunch of leaves. Dale gets enough treats. We are very careful what we give him. That's why he has the body of a Greek statue 😄
Fallen/broken limbs, larger logs, brown leaves, green grass clippings & weeds, compostING food scraps, etc. were my friend in getting my gargantuan fabric pots and beds filled (at the bottom to start). It was a lot of labor but we have a side yard that is heavy with trees and I have a friend who is regularly felling trees [he has a tree farm] and was offering logs. Added in native soil, compost... kept layering until the top 10" or so and is then when I'd add soil only.
I think that's a good plan if you have really deep raised beds that you're filling for the first time. When you're building up your existing beds, it isn't really an option unless you remove all the existing soil. That wasn't in the cards 😂
Dale is so sweet!! Begging for belly rubs in his pjs!! He loves you so much!! So glad you feature Dale every episode. Dale is the handsomest, bestest, boy!!!!
That was a good bit of work. Your back might not thank you, but eventually it will! I bury all my kitchen scraps in my garden beds. Works for me. Blessings!
I have a new, taller dump cart. I haven't had time to assemble it. It'll make it easier to fill the beds. That's the one downside of tall raised beds - they're harder to fill.
Sure! My kitchen scraps were probably 1/4 coffee grounds. I go through an embarrassing amount of coffee, and all the grounds go right into the garden or composter.
Potatoes are planted mid-March, about 2-3 weeks before last frost. Since they are buried underground, the frost won't harm them unless they break through the soil (and if you get a late frost, just bury them under compost). Spring onions are grown year round here. You can easily grow bunching onions 365 days a year.
Taller raised beds have marginally less cold protection than short raised beds or planting directly in the ground due to the insolation the roots being underground can provide. The difference in air temps you mention is negligible when talking about 6-12" in additional height. If it's cold enough to damage your plants at ground level, they are not going to magically survive if they are planted in a bed that is 12" higher without additional protection. In fact, taller raised beds can subject the root zones to colder temps as the soil within them acts more like soil in a container since it doesn't benefit from insolation the earth provides.
I have found the exact opposite to be true. It is completely remarkable how much cold protection I am getting in my taller raised beds. The 17 inches of height makes all the difference in the world. It is so profound, I just posted a video showing the incredible difference: ua-cam.com/video/x8stlbkpkVM/v-deo.htmlsi=nligMpbQi2vO7ihC And a short: ua-cam.com/users/shortsRNPu7QvW3LQ Do not discount how dramatic 17 inches of height is. Cold flows like a river, and the cold protection value of elevation is significant.
@TheMillennialGardener yeah I saw that short the other day, it looks like your taller raised bed has hoops and protective coverings and the low bed is fully exposed. Unless you dismantled the protection on the lower bed before filming, which i doubt, that is your difference, not a few inches of bed height.
We added some scrap to one of our raised beds and have been battling an out of control any colony for 6 months. I have tried so many things to get rid of it. I wish I knew exactly which scraps caused this. Does anyone have tips?
It probably isn’t the scraps. It is likely due to your soil. Ants need soil that holds shape. Heavy mulching and compost amendments prevent them from forming colonies. I recommend watching this video, using the spot-treatment product, then after they are gone, heavily amend with compost and a thick mulch layer with something like rotted straw mulch or a fine bark mulch: ua-cam.com/video/pr521FO4sMY/v-deo.htmlsi=5nmFTmcsEJmP59qm
Sure, as long as it isn't wood mulch that will take a long time to break down. If it's old leaf mulch, straw mulch, pine straw mulch or really well-decayed wood mulch that has mostly broken down, you can do that. What you don't want is fresh wood chips or something that'll take a long time to break down only a few inches deep.
You need to bury them deeply. It also helps to have a fence. A garden fence, in my opinion, is mandatory. Line the first 24 inches with fine chicken wire, too.
@ sounds good. It is easier for us to just not put kitchen scraps in the greenhouse. On top of the rats and mice, We are surrounded by woods with many predators and scavengers who think our farm is their grocery store and buffet.
Curious: don't the "weeds" breaking down pull nitrogen from the soil? Isn't that why we always add fully composted compost to the garden? I would think that simply adding vegetable matter that bacteria and mold are going to break down would deplete nitrogen from your soil and possibly from any vegetables that you plant over the time it takes for those weeds to fully decompose. Why is that not a problem for you?
I think this is largely a myth. The weeds don't take nitrogen from the soil - they add nitrogen to the soil. When you add organic matter, you are adding nutrients. In the very initial stages, there may be a draw of energy to begin the breakdown process, but then it is quickly given back and then some. This initial draw may be a lot more significant with big logs (which is why you're not supposed to bury wood chips in the first few inches of your soil), because they take forever to break down, but not weeds. They will be broken down in no time flat.
Anything planted on purpose wouldn't be a weed, so technically speaking, if you're planting a cover crop, it isn't a weed. I am experimenting with using strawberries as a cover crop for my apple and peach trees.
If you found this video helpful, please *LIKE* it and share it to help spread its reach! Thanks for watching 😊 TIMESTAMPS here:
0:00 Benefits Of Composting Weeds
1:16 Fill Raised Garden Beds Cheaper
4:58 Do Not Compost These Weeds
5:35 Filling Raised Beds With Weeds And Kitchen Scraps
7:33 Using Weeds As Fertilizer
8:29 Adventures With Dale
Happy to say filling beds is not a problem for me. Every year i have all the manure and hay from the horse,goats and chickens into a big pile let it work off and fill or top of beds .
Luxury! Maybe one day when I get a homestead going 😅
For sure, luxury. I'm just trying to get my to do 4-5 chickens. ❤❤❤
Happy Gotcha Day, Dale
My grandmom always buried kitchen scraps etc around her Apricot tree. It was like 30' x 30' large! People used to stop and take pics all the time!!!
Family has properly on the Virginia Carolina line, planning on restarting the old homestead and use the overgrowth to my advantage. Its all old farmland anyways
That's awesome! I dream of homesteading one day.
Love it, this is exactly what I did with my raised beds. YAY!!
Glad to hear it!
I got two new metal raised bed this year for the garden. They’re 8x4x2. It’s humongous. But, it’s tall and good on my back. I cleaned the yard up and just pile every dead plants and clippings and filled the beds. It’s going to take a good while to fill them up.
When I originally built my raised bed garden, I just bought my house and was totally broke, so I made the most affordable beds possible. They worked for the time being, but seeing a side-by-side comparison, it's not even close how much better the double-stacked beds are. If you can afford the extra height, it is worth every penny.
I have an 8ft by 3ft raised bed every time I remove dead or dying leaves I remove them and throw them on top of my bed and let them break down in the soil, my soil health was eventually so good I had mushrooms popping up in my bed in Phoenix during the summer, definitely recommend chop and drop 👍
That is a good idea when your bed is not in use. Covering your soil when nothing is growing in it is imperative. The sun can do a lot of damage to unprotected soil, especially if plants are not currently growing in it.
Great use of the plants that always survive winter, weeds. Everything else is dormant and brown, yet I have dandelions green as spring thinking their cabbage 😂
At least they're good for something!
Dale is so cute. I really enjoy the Adventures with Dale outros.
Good point on the invasive debris. I have accidentally spread horseradish into another raised bed this way. Still get it popping up every week despite removing it promptly when it does. 😅
I'm glad to hear it! Dale is great on camera. It's like he knows what to do. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was growing sweet potatoes in a raised bed. They have been coming back every year for 4 years 😄 Some things shouldn't be buried.
Great to see you put top boards on the new garden bed. Great for weading and picking.
This is the reason why I won't be converting to metal raised beds, after all. I just love sitting on the edges. It's so helpful.
Happy video anniversary Dale
Thank you 😊
Dale is so cute in his loungewear!
He has an extensive wardrobe
Great vid. Always learn something. Thank you for this.
My husband & I made & painted [4] 3' x 7' x 18" high beds last year with 2x4 over head to string up beans, 🍅, squash, zucchini, etc... [best use off 10' lumber - no scraps left]. We put plastic down in the entire bed, put in about 5" over existing river rock from previous home owners pool we got rid of, put yard fabric over that, then filled with dirt, compost. Ran a 1" or 3/4" x 7-10" PVC pipe out as water overflow is about 4-5" from the bottom of bed. Also had 12" or so black perforated drain pipe down through dirt to rock. I put my water hose in this & watered about every 3-5 days to fill the bottom of the bed. Worked pretty well until it got really hot, then I hand watered every other day with water hose from the top.
This year we are adding another 3 beds & burying a water line for automatic scheduled on/off watering.
The yard fabric I used was very thick, like what you have on the ground around your beds. I don’t think this allowed roots to reach through the fabric for water too much. This year, I'm going to use a much thinner & cheaper landscaping fabric & will also set them up with top watering.
We just last week gott warm enough to melt ice & snow here. I'm praying my blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, Jerusalem Artichokes, & asparagus made it through the winter. All covered with lots of straw. What do you think about them. Temps in single digits 2-3 nights along with a few weeks of 20's - 32⁰ nights. Fingers crossed 🤞.
Handsome Harry, aka Dandy Dale was looking for pets & as every fur baby, treats. But it's good to see your are a good pet parent by keeping his weight down. Over weights dogs live on average 2-4 less years than dogs trimmed down to weight given by vets. Give him a hug 4 me. God bless ❤❤❤❤
Blueberries and asparagus are Zone 3/4 hardy. Raspberries are Zone 4/5 hardy. Blackberries are zone 5/6 hardy. Single digit temps are nothing to them. They all tolerate cold well below zero. You can grow blueberries and raspberries in Minneapolis. They'll do just fine. Here in Zone 8, my blueberries, blackberries and strawberries don't even get fully defoliated. Even with all the ice, snow and temps in the teens we have, I still have a bunch of leaves.
Dale gets enough treats. We are very careful what we give him. That's why he has the body of a Greek statue 😄
@TheMillennialGardener you are just awesome & Lol funny. That Dale baby is so sweet. Thanks for info. God bless
Fallen/broken limbs, larger logs, brown leaves, green grass clippings & weeds, compostING food scraps, etc. were my friend in getting my gargantuan fabric pots and beds filled (at the bottom to start). It was a lot of labor but we have a side yard that is heavy with trees and I have a friend who is regularly felling trees [he has a tree farm] and was offering logs. Added in native soil, compost... kept layering until the top 10" or so and is then when I'd add soil only.
I think that's a good plan if you have really deep raised beds that you're filling for the first time. When you're building up your existing beds, it isn't really an option unless you remove all the existing soil. That wasn't in the cards 😂
Excellent information as usual! 👍
Glad it was helpful!
Great stuff, super helpful!!!
I'm glad you found it helpful!
Dale is so sweet!! Begging for belly rubs in his pjs!! He loves you so much!! So glad you feature Dale every episode. Dale is the handsomest, bestest, boy!!!!
Dale always wants something 😄 He's a good boy.
@ Dale just wants your attention and love, and vise versa. You can tell!
That was a good bit of work. Your back might not thank you, but eventually it will!
I bury all my kitchen scraps in my garden beds. Works for me.
Blessings!
I have a new, taller dump cart. I haven't had time to assemble it. It'll make it easier to fill the beds. That's the one downside of tall raised beds - they're harder to fill.
Is that a Bob Ross chia head in that garden bed?🙃
Yep!
Why?@@TheMillennialGardener
Could i use grass clippings and leaves, or would the become matted?
They are fine as long as you don’t treat your lawn with herbicides.
@TheMillennialGardener you rock, man! Thanks again!
Have you used anything to enhance pollination on your avocado? I have read some positive results including Gary's best gardening
I hand pollinate: ua-cam.com/video/8jdMMjZjI6g/v-deo.htmlsi=K1eBBRJ43D9Qdq9b
@@TheMillennialGardener I used plain sugar water and the bees were everywhere
Dale loves those extra superlatives!
Dale has a pretty extensive vocabulary.
@ so do our cats!
All your snow is gone?? Wow, that was fast!
It’s been gone for almost a week. It has been in the 60’s and 70’s the last 5-6 days.
What about eggshells and coffee grounds?
Sure! My kitchen scraps were probably 1/4 coffee grounds. I go through an embarrassing amount of coffee, and all the grounds go right into the garden or composter.
Helpful - thank you! I thought you were moving to Florida?
Not for at least 5 years. That is a very long way off.
Naa'aah, I smoke my weed 😂
I’m in Wilmington too, when do you plant your potatoes, and spring onions.?
Potatoes are planted mid-March, about 2-3 weeks before last frost. Since they are buried underground, the frost won't harm them unless they break through the soil (and if you get a late frost, just bury them under compost). Spring onions are grown year round here. You can easily grow bunching onions 365 days a year.
He posted a video last week letting us know when to plant.
Taller raised beds have marginally less cold protection than short raised beds or planting directly in the ground due to the insolation the roots being underground can provide. The difference in air temps you mention is negligible when talking about 6-12" in additional height. If it's cold enough to damage your plants at ground level, they are not going to magically survive if they are planted in a bed that is 12" higher without additional protection. In fact, taller raised beds can subject the root zones to colder temps as the soil within them acts more like soil in a container since it doesn't benefit from insolation the earth provides.
I have found the exact opposite to be true. It is completely remarkable how much cold protection I am getting in my taller raised beds. The 17 inches of height makes all the difference in the world. It is so profound, I just posted a video showing the incredible difference: ua-cam.com/video/x8stlbkpkVM/v-deo.htmlsi=nligMpbQi2vO7ihC
And a short: ua-cam.com/users/shortsRNPu7QvW3LQ
Do not discount how dramatic 17 inches of height is. Cold flows like a river, and the cold protection value of elevation is significant.
@TheMillennialGardener yeah I saw that short the other day, it looks like your taller raised bed has hoops and protective coverings and the low bed is fully exposed. Unless you dismantled the protection on the lower bed before filming, which i doubt, that is your difference, not a few inches of bed height.
We added some scrap to one of our raised beds and have been battling an out of control any colony for 6 months. I have tried so many things to get rid of it. I wish I knew exactly which scraps caused this. Does anyone have tips?
It probably isn’t the scraps. It is likely due to your soil. Ants need soil that holds shape. Heavy mulching and compost amendments prevent them from forming colonies. I recommend watching this video, using the spot-treatment product, then after they are gone, heavily amend with compost and a thick mulch layer with something like rotted straw mulch or a fine bark mulch: ua-cam.com/video/pr521FO4sMY/v-deo.htmlsi=5nmFTmcsEJmP59qm
Could you fill them with aged mulch wouldn't that work
Sure, as long as it isn't wood mulch that will take a long time to break down. If it's old leaf mulch, straw mulch, pine straw mulch or really well-decayed wood mulch that has mostly broken down, you can do that. What you don't want is fresh wood chips or something that'll take a long time to break down only a few inches deep.
@TheMillennialGardener very aged tysm
Leaves works great
My brother had a problem with rats when he put kitchen scraps in his greenhouse beds.
You need to bury them deeply. It also helps to have a fence. A garden fence, in my opinion, is mandatory. Line the first 24 inches with fine chicken wire, too.
@ sounds good. It is easier for us to just not put kitchen scraps in the greenhouse. On top of the rats and mice, We are surrounded by woods with many predators and scavengers who think our farm is their grocery store and buffet.
Dale is so handsome ❤
He got all the good genes in the house 🐶
👍
Thanks for watching!
Dale is such a handsome boy
He is a good looking pup 🐶
I was always afraid that I put weeds in my compost that they would reseed and will cause more weeds
Curious: don't the "weeds" breaking down pull nitrogen from the soil? Isn't that why we always add fully composted compost to the garden? I would think that simply adding vegetable matter that bacteria and mold are going to break down would deplete nitrogen from your soil and possibly from any vegetables that you plant over the time it takes for those weeds to fully decompose. Why is that not a problem for you?
I think this is largely a myth. The weeds don't take nitrogen from the soil - they add nitrogen to the soil. When you add organic matter, you are adding nutrients. In the very initial stages, there may be a draw of energy to begin the breakdown process, but then it is quickly given back and then some. This initial draw may be a lot more significant with big logs (which is why you're not supposed to bury wood chips in the first few inches of your soil), because they take forever to break down, but not weeds. They will be broken down in no time flat.
Awe man. I thought you were going to plant a cover crop of weeds...
Anything planted on purpose wouldn't be a weed, so technically speaking, if you're planting a cover crop, it isn't a weed. I am experimenting with using strawberries as a cover crop for my apple and peach trees.
😂