Barren to Fertile Soil: Using Cover Crops and Sheet Mulch
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- Опубліковано 21 січ 2018
- Here's how I brought very cheap but insanely effective fertility to my soil. Sheet mulches and cover crops are an incredible way to use nature to smother weeds, loosen soil, add tons of nutrients, remove contaminants, attract beneficial insects and other life, as well as condition the soil and microbiome. Without this cover crop I probably would have spent at least another $1,000 on initial soil to get my market garden going. It took about 6 months for the total process. But if you have the time this is far better for your soil in the long run than just bringing in a bunch of already made compost/nutrients.
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This is GREAT! Exactly what I was looking for. Just moved to a completely barren yard in a new subdivision in Central Texas. I have massive amount of packing paper and cardboard which I’ve been using to start border gardens right now. I’m watering the soil, putting down several layers of packing paper which I then water and covering that with cardboard which I water. I’m trying to get out at night every other night when the temperatures go down to lift the cardboard and water the paper and then the cardboard itself. I’m go8ng to order hay next and put it in the cardboard and go back to the packing paper, cardboard, etc. We’ve cancelled our lawn company contract and I’ve asked my husband to not mow the backyard again. I was planning on just sowing a native wildflower mix everywhere and see what happens, maybe hand water the yard once a week (we’re in a stage three drought). I thought about adding daikon radish to the seed mix and now yarrow. I’ve always worried about clover taking over a yard, so I hadn’t planned on sowing it. After I use up all of my boxes I was going to have it top-dressed with soil from the landscape company and see what I’ve got to work with in the spring. There’s not a flower anywhere in sight here, but I plan on my yard being a pollinators paradise! I have on birdbath and one bird feeder I’ve put up and have been rewarded with increased bird activity, a few insects, and I saw a single wild bee sipping from the birdbath yesterday. I moved from a gorgeous yard in a forest in NY, so this is a hard transition.
just read this. hopefully you got hay from a native grass prairie. You don't want to be stuck with Johnson grass, etc.
I heard of another guy that uses ducks to flatten but not break the cover crop so it feeds the soil and keeps the weeds from growing back. He just tosses peanuts in the field and they go for it and....nature takes care of itself!
The way you got excited about card board tripped me out! I’ve had card board in my garage and basement that I’ve been trying to get rid of for over a year and it never occurred to me to USE IT! Lol!! I knew it was useful but now I know how. Awesome content! 💕🙏🏻👍
Yeah the cardboard was a good score. I would love to see how you terminated the cover crop. I think you are doing a great job. Thanks for sharing. Janice
Well done. This is what I call a "value-added" video. While I love garden and urban farm/food forest tours, it's really nice to see something different. This is different and very educational. I'm in FL and it's 73 here today, so it feels like it's almost time to plant my garden. Maybe this fall a cover crop makes a ton of sense. Thanks for taking a simple concept...growing clover and grasses, sheet mulching etc., and turning it into a learning experience. One more thing: the patience you exhibit as you had to be itching last fall to get your farm going. Instead, you looked at the longer term and decided this would be of great long term benefit, so you prepped in the fall and now your farm looks great. Nice job!
Jim
Wow, thanks a lot for the awesome compliments Jim. I'm trying to do something that's totally my style and different so I'm glad you found it really useful! The patience was totally worth it, long term vs short term thinking. Nature is always thinking long term.
fesgegg
That cardboard was a score for sure! So glad that you shared your process of how you got where you are. Nice video, thank you for sharing. Catherine
Totally! My pleasure!
Hey! I enjoyed this video! 😍 Last year I experimented with cover crops, but loved them so much, I couldn't till them in. I'm really trying to practice no till gardening with permaculture principals, so now clover, rye, alfalfa and buckwheat are allowed to pop up wherever they want. 🥰🌾
It would be awesome to see a sheet mulch cardboard manufacturer, maybe made from hemp.
I love the idea of using the cover crop.
Thanks for the very informative video! Your garden looks great. I loved seeing the ladybugs and others all over your cover crop!! :)
Thanks so much, I love seeing the ladies too! It's always a good sign when they are there because they choose to be.
Great video. I'm definitely going to use your method when starting my garden. I will definitely be watching all of your videos in the future. Keep up the great work.
Thanks for the support Zagros! I love that you are going to do things naturally in your garden, stay tuned for a lot more gardening tips!
I'm new here and I've looking for this specific kind of tutorial! your really good at what u do and your cinematography is triple A plus ;)
Fantastic work prepping your soil!
Love cover crops! Thanks for sharing.
You’re very hardworking! Excellent video. Thank you.🌷
Thanks Tess! Happy gardening!
Awesome effort bro. Such a great watch, thank you so much for sharing this X
That was awesome! Sharing!
Awesome! Your video got me wondering about cover crops in a raised bed as well which apparently is a thing. You sound like a busy guy and I'm glad educating us by showing what's working for you is one of your gigs 😁
Yes you can definitely do a cover crop in a raised bed! My friend Kevin @Epicgardening made a video on it, ua-cam.com/video/GvxLPd3qi_Q/v-deo.html. In fact if you live in an area where it snows and you can't grow veggies during the winter, it's a great idea to over-winter a cover crop. Which means you plant at the end of summer and let the plant live until it just dies in winter. The plants and their roots dies and decompose added lots of nutrients and organic matter :) Yes I'm so happy to do it! It's really fun making videos and I love being able to expose people to this amazing world of regenerative farming.
Nature's Always Right thanks for the video suggestion. Very interesting and I hope Kevin has an update soon. No snow (or an inch or two every few years) here and I suspect our areas are very similar climate wise. I'll hopefully remember to try it out at the end of this growing season.
I'm in zone 10a if that helps. Yes Kevin will be posting at least one of our new videos we made together hopefully next week :)
Great looking garden. I am doing this here but did not know much about it so thanks for all the info in the vidoes.
Very nice video, great coordination of sound and video. Thank you for posting.
Thanks, it was fun making it!
SCORE👍👍. I ♥️♥️♥️ cardboard!!! My friend has a framing shop & I gladly take all her cardboard. Really like how you did the layering 👍
I like your way of explaining a lot, I am from Germany and will start something similiar this year. I follow all your new videos and hope you will add a plenty more :) good luck!
Wow thank you that great to hear. I hope I can get better and better at explaining and make the videos entertaining for you guys too. Very happy to hear you will be starting your own small farm. Send me a message on social media when you start I'd be happy to follow you and see your progress!
Thanks for sharing all your information thanks
You are very welcome :) glad it is beneficial.
Looks awesome
Love your channel, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience!
Thanks I'm glad you are liking it :) happy to share.
You are doing the right thing, add organic matter, inoculate with compost and a riot of diversity.
The key to cover crops is the roots, they feed exodates to the soil life building the rhizosphere ready for your plants
Good work I look forward to the next
Litterally subbed in the first 5 seconds of this video. Love that post malone song . i bumped it all last year when i started gardening
Great info!!! Hard worker. I love your channel save the music. Besides that you’ve been so helpful. Thanks for your passion!!
Dude ! Great documentation! Thank you very much!
You're welcome man! Thanks for the feedback.
Full process wad very helpful. Thanks
Your channel along with sensei Cutis Stone, Neversink, and others are an amazing resource! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and best wishes on your continuing success
Thanks a lot for saying that Ian, to even be compared to those guys is an honor. I'm so happy the info I'm sharing has been valuable to you!
You're a genius my friend! Thank you so much for being a teacher. I'm currently moving from Canada to Sicily Italy and I have a bit of land there. Obviously I'm going to be starting up a garden, and I've been looking for someone to show me the ropes... Looks like I've found my guy! I can't wait to keep watching your vids and checking out some of the books and resources you recommend. Thanks.
I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants, but thank you for your compliment that means the world to me. Nice that sounds amazing. Growing in Sicily will be incredible. Best of luck with your new land :)
Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes once I get over there, but I'm preparing and coming up with a game plan now. And don't be TOO modest, it takes a lot of work to sort through all the information that you are now putting into action. It is so well thought out and practical. It's really a great model for a manageable self-sustainable garden!
Please do. Thanks a lot it makes me really happy to know my work is valued.
Oh fantastic!! I love how you worked with nature! We are starting out gardenwise and after digging one 30 inch bed about 46 feet long in our clay soil, with gneiss rock everywhere I threw up my hands in surrender and decided to sheet mulch the dang thing. Found manure delivered for free (well, for gas and a 6 pack), leaves takes out of yards and deep litter from my highly destructive chickens as compost. We used buckwheat for a cover crop, but plan to incorporate more in the future following the main gardening season this year. Thanks for the tips about biodiversity, grasses actually being of use, and just going for it!
Awesome Natasha, sounds like you are well on your way to building some incredibly rich garden beds. You are so welcome glad it was helpful for you! Good luck with your garden!
great video. great explanation.
Love your method. I’m going to do it!
You make great videos. They are on par with Curtis Stone which is how I found you. I love this one in particular. I am doing this exact same thing in my backyard and seeing you do it really helps me it's amazing how the cardboard disappears. Keep up the good work.
Goin' back in time and watching this dude...love the music cuts :)
Thanks man this was a fun one!
Harsh tunz
There might be a lesson here. Will never know. The accompanying sounds are far from inclusive. Suppose the point was to limit the audience appeal.
@Epic Gardening I am a fan of your work! keep it up!
Part 2 journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_pain.html
Jean Pain has no diploma; but he is intelligent, highly adaptable and keenly observant. And starting in 1965, be devoured dozens of books on science while carrying out his first experiments. He began by fermenting the brushwood cuttings as he brought them in, but soon realized that fermentation would be more efficient if the bigger boughs were chopped up as finely as possible. No machine for this existed, so he invented one, building it in his garage with salvaged material. The potential significance of Pain's discovery is enormous. What it means, to Pain, is that forests can become twenty-first-century man's "guardian angels."
The stakes for France are obviously high. While the French import 126 million tons of oil annually, throwing their balance of payments seriously off the mark, French forests constitute an energy back-up with a potential that biologist Robert du Pontavice estimates as equivalent to 20 million tons of oil (TEP). Nor are these merely "theoretical" and unexploitable resources.
Pain has taken the costs of his method into account. He has gone over and over his calculations and the figures are there: 1,000 hectares of forest can supply 6,000 tons of fertilizer a year, 960,000 cubic metres of biogas (or 480,000 litres oil equivalent) and millions of litres of hot water. And exploiting the forest costs only 12 per cent of the energy extracted from it.
What's more, the cycle can be repeated indefinitely as brushwood is renewed every seven years. Thus, not only would the forest remain clean and free from the danger of fire, but would provide an inexhaustible supply of fertilizer and thermal energy.
Multiple Usages
Already in France and throughout the world, many uses are being made of the techniques Pain developed at the Dornaine des Templiers. In France, eight municipalities have chosen to adopt his techniques for recycling vegetation and supplying heat and hot water to public buildings, hot-houses and sports facilities.
"In Sainpuits (Yonne), a village of 500 inhabitants, we heat several buildings with the object of proving the value of the system," I was told by Etienne Bonvallet, project foreman of the pilot operation. In the Savoie, Chambery began to use Jean Pain's method in January 1980. A 200-cubic-metre compost bed, made of broken wood from plane trees and lime trees, will supply 23,400 kilocalories an hour and heat a 200 square-metre hot-house. Within two years, it will be possible to salvage 80 cubic metres of humus for the community gardens.
Says Henri Stehle, internationally respected agriculture expert and botanist and Institute of France prize-winner, "At the end of the path Pain has opened, stands tomorrow's self-sufficient agribusiness producing its own fertilizer and the power to run its equipment." Pain's methods are beginning to spread to the rest of Europe. In Brussels, Belgium, stands a compost plant and a flourishing garden. This is the experimental station of the International Jean Pain Committee, formed in 1978 by Frederik Vanden Brande, former Belgian secretary-general of the Council of European Townships, to publicize Pain's techniques.
Verdant Future
This station is the showcase of the Jean Pain committee, and its pride. But the committee has many other activities. It puts out brochures, gives lectures, and organizes twice yearly, two-week training programmes where 100-odd farmers, students, and environmental specialists from various parts of the world study grinding, composting, . and methane production procedures.
Both in France and abroad, Jean Pain's methods are destined to be applied over a wider field. Pain has devoted followers in Australia, the United States, Tunis, Latin America and Japan, The book he wrote with his wife, already translated into five languages, has sold 70,000 copies.
International energy expert Robert Giry, author of Is Nuclear Energy Useless?, predicts: "In our times of crisis, with European agriculture in danger of one day suddenly finding itself deprived of energy, the path opened by Jean Pain for the production of fertilizer, fuel and electricity could lead to a brimming future."
The simplest principles often underlie the most useful discoveries. Now, when soil exhaustion and the search for new energy sources are the leading brain-twisters in the developed societies, Jean Pain, the self-taught scientist with calloused hands, offers a commonsense solution: the green gold that's to be found almost everywhere in the world. It is here, under our feet; we have only to stoop down to gather it.
Nice job... That was a ton of work. Wish I had someone hear to work with me like that!
Oh ya tons of work and continues to be! I'm still getting tons of rocks out of some of my beds. Hehe I wish I had more help over here too :)
wow, i've got good timing! i just found your channel earlier today and was wondering what happened to you. Great video! thanks for sharing!
Yes you do! I'm still alive and making videos haha. Thanks for watching my new video Dustin. Will be releasing a new video weekly.
Dustin Hill I thought I had lost him as well
Haha not going anywhere guys. I'm just a slow starter ;)
great video thanks so much
Great information in your videos man keep it up!
Thanks John, glad you are liking them!
Thanks for a very inspiring video 👍
You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed it :)
Nice work!
I worked on a small scale farm for a summer. I wish i still did it. So what im planning is doing it on my land for profit. Like you are! You have a great growing season in CA. Im in NC and we have a short season, but we can get a lot grown in a short time. This looks likes a lot of work. But your preparing new soils on a older site. Good luck this year with profits!
Awesome Dillon, I'm excited to hear that! Best of luck to you in your farming endeavors! Build good soil and success will come :)
Good job! Keep it up!
Thanks, I'll never stop!
Great job 👍🏻
Love this!
Super bad ass cardboard find!!! That makes it so easy. Great vid
Ya it was the best! My buddy found more for me from a garage door company, another good type of company to contact ;)
Tremendous!! Thank you!!
Brilliant video subscribed keep it up
Thanks so much for the support my friend!
You said you didn't know what was in your soil. Have you not had it tested? I love your ideas but I'm trying to learn and I figured that would be a baseline. I just had mine tested and I'm still analyzing the results. Lol. I'm not able to have a typical garden. Most of what I grow is in a container. Your principles and ideas are really interesting and makes me want to make a permanent cover crop. In other words, a wildflower garden. Lol. Thanks for documenting so well. I love how you stumbled upon that huge cardboard resource! How perfect! Loved the music and I'm 63. Your results are beautiful too. I'm formulating ideas in my mind now based on what you taught. Am a sub now. Will be tuning in again.
Great video. Love the music!
Loving the dub at the start of the video!!
Nice glad you like the music!
The music is lit.. great video
Thanks Adrienne glad you enjoyed it! I love that remix too!
Great work!!! Hello from Tijuana.
Thanks! Hello neighbor :)
Dude! I am in New Mexico with 2.5 acres of land I want to work on! I started following you and started from your first video! Thanks for all the info! I am currently making my own compost! Hope to gain a bunch of knowledge from you. If you are ever in New Mexico let me know!
Dude! I love your videos! Thank you so much for sharing all of this info!
In the end of your video you were talking about how you need to keep working on this soil conditioning until you have several feed of top soil.
Have you made a video for that yet?
I'm wondering how you do that if you're always growing vegetables there.
Thanks again!
You are very welcome. The process takes years to make a foot worth of loamy amazing soil. No-till, compost, and aerated teas are how I'm achieving that. I'm about a year in of non stop planting and conditioning and it's so much better than it was. It's been incredible to watch. I'll have to show what my soil is looking like now.
Shared from Toon and Leigh
Brilliant
When I get my own house, I'm going to replace the grass with clover and beans. Screw the perfectly cut grass, I want a yard that really is alive.
native wildflower groundcovers are great too.
Gave Brown recommends up to 12 varieties
Hope you don't move into a housing development managed by "grass & lawn Nazis " like we have here in Florida. They will tear your dream to shreds.
Terrific cover crops.
A word of warning, though: you are destroying whatever benefits of the cover crop by removing the crop and tilling. Tilling destroys the mycelium/bacterial web that creates the tilth of your soil.
Consider flattening the CC onto your field and planting through the terminated crop. It acts as a mulch and will compost in place.
Ray Archuleta is a soil scientist, you may be interested in his research. Lots on YT.
Great work. Best success to you.
Flyover Pilgrim Is it possible to direct sow between the cover crop?
Yes , I was chocked when he said it.
@@_j_a_d_e yes
Yes. Tillage is one of the most destructive activities that man does to soil. It oxidizes soil carbon sending it to the atmosphere as CO2, and the nitrogen as nitrous oxide. Beneficial bacteria and fungi, earworms etc are killed. Soil loses its armor causing moisture loss, higher soil temps in the summer, colder soil temps in winter.
You can terminate the cover crop with grazing animals, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks turkey or rabbits in tractors (moveable pens). You can stop taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps backward. Yes, check out videos with Ray Archuleta and Gabe Brown.
Hey has anyone ever tried chopping down their cover crop and just sheet mulching over the top of it? How did it go? I feel like the tricky part is trying to figure out when the right time is to cut down the cover crop, especially when you have used a very diverse mix. I thought I might treat the cover crop like I would treat a lawn that I want to grow over.
Love you videos and music choice lol
Thanks! Choosing music is one of my favorite parts :)
I’ve tried many species and favor a blend of Austrian peas, buckwheat and rye sown as a blend. That grows for 60 days then I flail mow it with my BCS. If winter is coming, that’s left to naturally decompose. If we’re at mid-summer then I till it in and plant a second round. This is incredibly transformative.
Thanks for the variety recommendations and tips Kris. That's really helpful. This was my first time doing a cover crop so I really want to do a much better job next time. I like your technique of flail mowing I wish I had a BCS! One day when I have a larger farm I'm definitely getting one.
If you have a lawn mower, you basically have a good flail mower. I make my own compost by taking Organic straw and sprinkling it over grass with pine bedding (preferably very fine like saw dust). The grass grows into the straw, etcetera, then when the grass is around four inches and poking through, I cut it and catch it with a bag mower. Pile this up and inoculate it with a product that you can buy on Amazon called “RECHARGE”. It has an amazing cocktail of both digestive fungi and bacteria which will chew up that plant matter in about 40 days. It also has “predatory” bacteria like Bacillus subtillus which kill pathogenic bacteria and fungi. All good; nothing bad. BTW, the reason for the straw and pine bedding is to follow the rule “Mix green with brown!”. In other words, fresh plant material which has energy with lignified material which supplies Carbon which acts as a “diaper” to hold all the sundry elements. For brown material, don’t forget coffee grounds which are available for free wherever there is a Starbucks. All you have to do is supply them with buckets with lids and be faithful about collecting them. The grounds are slightly acidic, but I always add pelleted dolomitic limestone to my compost piles, so that’s a moot point. Azomite rock powder is another good adjutant.
Wonderful information. I like the details. That sure was good cardboard - long strips and little tape. I use lots to transform my grass lawn into gardens - a section each year - but sometimes the cardboard is hard to come by. When did you add the wheat, mistake or not? I've used hairy vetch as a cover crop with great results and am experimenting with mustard greens. Also, I fill in spaces in the summer with buckwheat. It flowers quickly and the insects love it. Borage and yarrow are in my pollinator section. Clover grows wild in my lawn. The disadvantage is that my bare feet get stung by yellow jackets when I walk across it. You are very busy so I appreciate all the info you give. Looking forward to more.
Yes! That cardboard was a real miracle find haha. I was just driving down the road I do everyday and was like hey!! Omg that's a lot of cardboard! Gotta love those fun discoveries! So I didn't talk about the wheat as well as I should have. I got "Straw" from a guy selling them cheap, $7/bale but they werent' totally straw lol is what hay. Hay has the seeds in it. So when I spread out the straw mulch to help cover the seeds and to hold moisture the wheat seeds were also broadcast. Yes vetch is a great nitrogen fixer, buckwheat is great too. I think the more mix of different types of plants in the cover crop really helps to maximize the soil conditioning effect. Nice! Borage and yarrow are some of my absolute favorites and they accumulate nutrients in the soil so win win! Thanks for the support! New video or 2 next week for sure!
Excellent video!! The results we're obviously amazing!! Question, if you could go back in time, is there anything you'd do differently to start that garden? Apologies if you've already answered or made a video on the topic. Cheers from Victoria BC
Thanks for the video! I have a field of highly compacted clay soil, the huge weeds cut off, but thick stems sticking out. I would like to know how you got rid of weeds (the big ones) before putting down cardboard, etc to plant the cover crop. Cause to me it looks like I'll have to till lightly to be able to pull out those thick stems.
Great video. Good Info. One thought from an old man. Work the fartherest spots from your source materials first. Then closer and closer to your source. You are still young and healthy put there will come a time. If you do the areas fartherest away you have less and less distance to cover as you tire. It's just good work habits to develop now.
Thanks very much Casey. Yes I definitely took what permaculture design calls, "Zones" and scale of permanence into mind when planning out the layout of my entire property. That is great advice. I'm 30 so I'm definitely into working smarter and not harder nowadays haha.
Awesome video, I found it on ecosnipets, One hint all lupine seeds need to be scarified, and soaked in warm water, I learned that from a Nat. Park Gardener.
Oh nice :) Thanks for the tip! I'll try that out, I have been getting my lupine to sprout the the germination rates haven't been amazing.
I am so happy just like i got all that cardboard :)))
This is super informative. I live in central Alaska and have a very hard time bringing my compost to temperature. I believe that I'm getting the ratio right and the moisture, but it still never reaches above 80°. Any recommendations? I would love to use it on my garden. P.s. It's partially from chicken waste
Nice video your garden is looking great. I have a space a little smaller than your and I’m looking to do something similar to your garden and take my veggies to my local market. My question is if you had access to very good cheap soil ($25 a ton) would you have still covered cropped? I’m thinking about just tilling the existing grass/weeds, adding in organic manure from a neighbor, the soil/compost and going from there. Ive used this soil in 4 raised beds I made the past year and had pretty good success. This was my first year gardening and I’m looking to expand my growing area. If I cover crops I’ll have to wait until the fall to start growing bc I live in FL. Can’t grow to much here in the dead heat of summer. Any advice would help. Thank you.
If you want to build the beds immediately and start farming then just buy the soil. Idk how you are getting $25/ton that is essentially free lol. If it is actual composted organic matter/manure then wow that's amazing. My goal was to achieve fertility on my land without importing a bunch of soil. I could have just bought soil, but I wanted to prove that fertility could be achieved naturally, very cheaply, but as effectively as bringing in soil. And prove that I could make most of my own soil for my farm from the beginning. I've been successful in that goal so far and it looks like I'll be able to sustain it from here on out! I'm making about 2 cu/yds of compost every 3 months, in addition to the other fertility systems I have like vermicompost.
Love this with the sheet mulch. I have done this on a small scale but quickly had a change of heart when I picked up the cardboard and found a small snake-yikes. no it is all good. I did want to ask you how you suppressed the clover once you started your crops. Here is NC, it can become quite a weed. Ideas?
I didn't let my cover crop go to seed, once I see flowers I take them out. Now that I'm growing for production I kill all weeds when they are babies very easily with a collinear or scuffle hoe.
Curious how you like your drip setup. Here in California it seems to be the only responsible way to water, but the lines sure are annoying. Am considering overhead watering with just a really heavy mulch instead.
Subscribed.
Steven, você é simples , sábio , inteligente, guerreiro e tem sua própria opinião, my brother Steven, concordo contigo, infelizmente o monopólio empresarial faz isso para arrecadar dinheiro=money, sem dúvida diploma na era da internet não é tudo para quem não tem sabedoria para empreender, meus parabéns my brother Steven, Deus=God , te abençoe=bless you...
Boa noite Steven, bem organizada a sua horta, você é autodidata ou é formado em alguma universidade rural americana ?, fica na paz de Deus Yahweh e nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo, você é uma pessoa muito sábia no que faz, eu nunca vi ninguém plantar desse jeito com tanto carinho e foco no que sabe e no que faz, meus parabéns Steven.., valeu um forte abraço Brasileiro..
I am self-taught I never wen to any university for farming. I studied Information Systems. But I have had a lot of different agriculture teachers and mentors over the years. Learn from other's experience, academia is mostly pointless and they are subsidized by the government and corporations. They will try to brainwash you to what the status quo is rather than what is right. I don't recommend going to university actually, unless the degree will truly further your career like if you want to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer,scientist ect.
more videos please!!
Haha I'll do my best to get another out tonight or tomorrow ;) finished the farm work for the day, so now I can work on the computer.
ua-cam.com/video/T8JugRu8_Z0/v-deo.html&lc=z230vt144wzbgj1oy04t1aokg2pn0f24xunvwyt5nxygbk0h00410
Nice! Inspiring work you and others are doing. Love your videos man, you are making real impact by taking time out of your production to share the process! Thanks.
Hi, thanks for this video! What did you do with the ground once you cut the cover crop down? It looks like it was able to dry over time. I just tried this method when I heard you talk about it on the Epic Gardening channel.
I understand the problem of juggling blogging, gardening experiments and trying to earn money. Vlogging is in another dimension in terms of time investment. I'd like you to keep at it because I find your stuff so educational, but that's my selfish desire. Please be kind to yourself too. Its tough doing all that. Life is tough but gardening life is where the degrees of tough are tested.
Hey there, fantastic video channel, thank you so much for the valuable insights ! One question popped in my mind when I saw the vast amount of cardboard you've been using ; did you check before if they were safe and not treated with pesticide ? I heard they're sometimes treated against pest and that could be an issue when they decompose. Thanks again man, what you do is the future. Jean from France
Thanks Jean! I've never heard of cardboard being treated with pesticides. I only use cardboard with no tape or glue, no writing at all. Maybe you mean straw? For straw it's definitely possible as grains are sprayed, sourcing organic or non-sprayed is the best. Unfortunately these chemicals are so prevalent now they are almost unavoidable altogether. Glyphosate is in the ground water and even when it rains. That's why it's important to have really healthy soil biology because they will isolate and eliminate toxins over time.
Did you do your cover crop in the spring? How long did you let it grow and how did you terminate it? I just got a nice sized plot at work and want to set things up right for next year. I am in MD zone 7. Thanks!
where can you get straw. I have the most difficult time getting material here in Florida. Thanks, great work all around......
Enjoyed watching you rebuilding your yard and creating soil using Cover crop to create a bio-mass for the soil biology. Lasagna layering the yard with the cardboard and straw was a nice touch. Have you though about using Bio-char when layering?
Thanks! That would have been fantastic. I would totally do that now, I wasn't making it before. I keep adding in more components of inoculants and soil biology boosters to my methods. Korean natural farming is my latest thing I'm studying. I'll be talking about both and how to do them on the channel eventually :)
@@NaturesAlwaysRight look up Dave Brown regenerative agriculture and listen to a few of his lectures or Ray Archuleta
Oh ya I'm a big fan of those guys :)
Thanks so much for the helpful video! Been looking for a video with someone planting cover crop on cardboard. Yo that cardboard is awesome!!!! Where did you get your cardboard? Im in SD too and I'm looking for a good source for cardboard. Also where did you get your compost soil?
Great idea.
We'd like to try you're technique. Do you think it would fail because our termites love cardboard to bits?!
1:46 BORRAGE YESSSSSSSS! I completely forgot about this amazing plant
2:05 s it true clover only starts introducing nitrogen as it flowers? Can anyone correlate or deny that?
Ya I love borage too! I believe the bacteria on the roots of clover fix nitrogen the whole time, but at the end of the life when it's flowering and has the biggest root structure they are fixing the most nitrogen.
Great video Brother! We gotta link up soon.
Thanks Ron! Hell ya man, I need to come see your place. We'll be in touch!
Just found you channel, also good timing as I am researching the steps I need to take to winter ready a new garden plot for next spring. Do you utilize wood chips? Ehh or why not?? Thank you for any suggestions and your thoughts.
I love woodchips I use them on all open ground, large pathways, and under fruiting trees and vines. My pathways are too small to put them in between my rows but if I had large pathways between beds I would put the woodchips there too.
Question...I'm eager to apply this sheet mulching to an area in my garden... but wondering if you could explain why you tilled in the cover crop? Didn't that bring weed seeds up already in your weed bank under the surface? Am I missing something? If it did, how did you deal with those weeds before forming your beds? Also, if tilling brought up weed seeds, was your purpose in doing this just to add fertility?--Why then wouldn't you just eliminate the time and money expense of sheet mulching and potting soil and just till and plant in the native soil you already had? Thank you so much for your time and effort in making some excellent content!
I will be showing how I tilled and created the beds in a future video :) But basically I needed to use a tiller to form my beds and chop up the remaining plants from the cover crop. You are correct that by tilling I did whip up the seed bank. I did stale seed bedding for about a month in summer, hoping it would wipe out the weed seeds. It worked well but it didn't fully rid all seeds. After a year my weed pressure isn't bad at all. Hoping to have most of it all gone by next year. The purpose of the sheet mulch and cover crop was to kill the grass more than weeds, and of course to add fertility. Starting in that first ground would have been a disaster for me, crops would have been horrible and attacked by pests because they are so weak without nutrients. My expense was very low to do the cover crop and sheet mulch. I spent like $200 total, and got $1,000s in fertility out of it in my opinion. You're very welcome I'm glad you are enjoying it!
You didn't say how you ended the cover crop. Did you crimp it and leave a crop residue (Gabe Brown style), then drill your cash crop seed in? or did you till it in (conventional)? Are you planning a cover crop every year? Yes, the cardboard find was a major boost.
Hi Joan, what you describe will actually be my next big video, should come out early this week. I'll show you what I did with the cover crop :) but I mowed it down with a tractor, let it decompose, and stale seed bed, then I tilled to incorporate the matter and make my beds at the same time. No tilling will ever occur again. I don't plan on doing another large scale cover crop. But on individual beds it is possible I may choose to do that. Yes that cardboard was so helpful :)
Hi Steven, love the videos. I have a question/situation that I"m hoping you can provide some guidance/direction. I own some property in Colorado that I'll be driving out to this weekend and was wondering what I might be able to do to begin preparing the soil or anything along those lines. We won't be living there for 2-3 years but would like to begin prepping the land.
It seems that planting fruit trees will be difficult because of the deer, unless we invest more money in a fence, etc., so that seems out. I remember a video where someone laid down cardboard and mulch over it to prepare the soil and was wondering if I could/should do something like that? I currently live 17 hours from my property and will visit it once a year so I can't really plant a cover crop and then tear it down at the proper time. I also don't have a water source yet, but could pay someone for maintenance I suppose. As you can see I have some obstacles. Does it seem that I'm just better off waiting till I move there? Anyhow, if you can think of anything that I can do please advise. Thanks again!
Ya that is a tricky situation if you will never be there, one I have never been in or really learned how others would do it. So I can't really recommend something specific. I also don't know anything about your land or goals for that land. I'd look into some crops that I could plant and let grow that build fertility. Seed your own pasture with a lot of different types of grasses that will help build biomass under the soil and condition it. You can do trees but you have to protect them. I'm sure there must be other homesteaders online in a similar situation to you where they are a couple years away from moving to their land who have good advise.
Great! Love it. What is the size of your farm in square meter?
Looks great. However, I've always questionex the use of cardboard as an organic method with all the glue. Is the a better alternative?
I think I get the purpose of the cardboard: keeps the weeds from reaching sunlight for a while, lets the beneficial plants take over. Does the straw serve the same purpose, and if so, why do both?
Or is the straw just a cheaper way to add organic matter and minerals, than organic fertilizers and/or more compost?
Yes you are correct about the cardboard. The straw has that affect slightly but mainly for adding organic matter to the soil because I had heavy clay soil. I do both to get the benefits of both. Straw will just add organic matter and carbon after breaking down it doesn't have much in the way of nutrients. The cover crop is what brought in and converted a ton of nutrients in the soil.
Hey man ! I learn a lot from you, i am just starting to get info on these things as i want to build a farm around a cabin i have near the mountains. Not very high in altitude, crops grow around there. It is rural Romania. I have a question about MAKING the soil farmable. WHAT time should i do all of this ? the cardboard etc stuff. Is it ok in summer, fall, winter ? When should i start this process..and do you have any idea on how to do this in a more natural environment. I mean the land isn't straight etc.
Wow rural Romania, sounds beautiful. If you have a lot of grass or weeds to get rid of then summer is best so that they die much more quickly under cardboard or tarp. If the land isn't straight then you will have to do more prep work laying out the beds, to make them uniform. If there is a slope then you also need to think about contour and where the water will run when it rains. Check out Ben Faulk's farm, Richard Perkins, Geoff Lawton, those guys are out in the country and will give you amazing ideas.
Steven what was the composition of the organic material you purchased to prepare your soil?
So the layer of soil you saw me broadcast cover crop seed into was 7 yards compost blended with 2 yards perlite. You don't need to use perlite though. I just did that because at the time I was making some personal garden beds and needed propagation mix to sprout seedlings. Trying to save money by buying a big load that would also work for sprouting the cover crop in.
The video is awesome I liked it very much so inspiring and it shows everything you do. I was hoping you would make a close up to the names of the seeds that you put in your cover crop sometimes we cannot hear the name or maybe it's an unfamiliar seed for me I wish you made a close up on these packages so we can see the name written, especially the wildflowers. Another thing if you're talking about Deep Roots so I wonder why you didn't put cereal Ray or crimson clover because those two have the deepest roots, and crimson has the highest nitrogen of all the clovers. Finally thank you very much for showing us the wonderful planning that you did on your farm I love the cardboard idea.
Ya I apologize for the bad sound and video. I still need to get a microphone, and a real camera. These are all videos I recorded last year when I wasn't that good at filming. The more videos I make the better I'll get hehe :) Yarrow, Borage, Alyssum, Berseem Clover, Doublecut Red Clover, Hykon Rose Clover, Yellow Sweet Clover, and wheat were the main things I grew in the cover crop.
check out Hanley Smith - sounds like he has...
Nature's Always Right
Thank you for taking the time to write all the seed names ;)
No problem Yaya :)
Great video and awesome garden! My question is once the cover crop is mature what do you do? Do you chop and drop and cover it once again with a multch? If so, what do you cover it with? Thanks so much and happy growing!
I think that's going to be my next video. I used a small tractor to knock down the crop, I then stale seed bedded the area with a black sileage tarp. That's a technique for killing more weed seeds. Then before spring I then used a rototiller to incorporate the remaining cover crop into the soil to decompose and add more organic matter and nutrients to the soil. Happy growing!
To enrich the soil this way, chop it and drop it... much like clover will grow back then you can cut it a 2nd time. the purpose is to put the crop back into the soil. the roots go deep to bring nutrients up. then u chop it so then the nutrients go back to the top soil then you will soon have better soil.
the cover crop will become its own mulch. but if you can use lawn clippings or whole tree leaves. before pulling "weeds" you should also try to identify it as many weeds are actually beneficial to make bad soil into rich soil.
That's a great idea. Cutting it back one time and letting it regrow would have been a nice way to create more organic matter and root structure. I'll have to try that next time! Thanks!
Yes I did cut the cover drop down and it became mulch. I know every single plant in my yard by name, trust me I knew which "Weeds" I didn't want. But I did let those weeds grow until they flowered because they do provide benefit to the soil. But I didn't want them dropping their seeds onto the market plot. Believe me I know all about weeds not being weeds ;) invasives aren't invasive either ;)
Question: are you using organic hay? I'm about two hours north of you and am looking for a source of organic or at least pesticide free hay.
Thanks!
They don't sell organic hay as far as I am aware of unfortunately. It is literally impossible to avoid some type of contamination from industrial sources. In 2018, our world is so polluted we can't have 100% pure food anymore, but we can get very close. The fact that hey is dried and breaks down in to the soil really mitigates any pesticide residue. But we just can't eliminate it all unfortunately. The agriculture system, and consumers spraying poisons/glycho makes it impossible. The system needs to change small scale ag businesses like mine and much larger are the key to changing this.
Well it's good to know I can use any hay and it won't matter once it breaks down.
Are you able to do any sort of consulting? I'm sure you could save me a lot of time on my property.
Thanks!
FYI not that it matters at all, but did you intend for the title in the thumbnail to say CROVER instead of either clover or cover? Great video content. Thanks for sharing.