What's Holding Your Soil Back
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- Many things can cause a garden to underperform. In this video we tackle some of the big ones.
This video answers: how to make garden soil better, how to properly fix garden soil, how comapction effects soil, what to do about compaction, what to do about poor drainage, and more.
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The summer series were good and all... but it's good to have Jesse back.
The only man who calls me a nerd and I don't get upset. I didn't think it was possible.
Jesse, try this next season: Carefully dig up a range of selected plants, the ones we are trying to grow as well as all the weeds, and compare the root rhyzosheaths side by side. The hardest to eradicate weeds like crab and quack grass and the others always have very active soil around roots looking picture perfect when pulled up; I first noticed this when hand pulling quack grass after knowing what rhizosheaths were supposed to look like on garden plants. Washing those root materials into a bucket seems to make a great compost tea mix to transplant that superior biology elsewhere. Weeds have the best exudate program going on underground and we just need to figure out how to manage and select heirlooms to improve our garden seeds' ground game.
❤ thank you
You're right about the grasses (especially the quack/couch, bane of my existence); the roots are always well-sheathed and teeming with earthworms so they're definitely pumping out something that soil residents enjoy. I must give your tea idea a try, thanks for the tip!
I absolutely find this to be true. I talk all the time about how impressed I am with the rhizosheaths on grasses and weeds like purple nettle. Those jerks.
This makes so much sense!
Love this comment, thanks!
"Weeds are Nature being Passive Aggressive" would make a good T-shirt.
Blessed with clay. I did the add compost to top of soil. Five years straight. Minimum tillage, die-back cover crops, Shredded leaves as cover each year. I'm now (2023) beginning to see the results of my labor. Five inches of rain sinks right in. The clay is black to an 8" depth. I can dig root crops by hand. I was impressed with farmer Jessie stating that growing plants was the best fertility treatment for soil, or something to that effect. That has been my observation too. Frost to frost plants will wake up the biology like nothing else. Keep these videos coming. I'm a gardener, not a farmer, but benefit from your help and knowledge. Thank you for these tips.
good to hear this method is working, i'm doing this same thing, i just started this year :) i also threw a bunch of different leftover veggie seeds on a small area just to see what would happen and the difference it made in just a few months is crazy. they haven't produced much but now the water gets into the soil wich was the main problem and now there's a bunch of different kind of weeds instead of the previous 2 (sounds weird to be happy about this but oh well) and the veggies attracted some bugs as well. maybe not the best method but better than nothing😅
Love the idea of the soil being passive-aggressive if we aren't doing our job. I quit turning the soil years ago and I don't spend much time weeding.
carry on. LOL. you crack me up with your wittiness
Awesome thank you. We produce all of our own compost/nutrients here on farm. LOTS of barley hay. I have to sprout and kill everything. Worked out a system of letting it grow then grazing the goats over it and then the chickens then it goes to the garden. plant animal synergy is amazing, and I love living this way. I hope I never stop learning, it just keeps getting better.
I'm based in NE Thailand, I've found that compost under (grass/gardenwaste) mulch for a month plus is transformative.
I just have to say I really enjoy your humor... keep it coming ♥
Dude, you are so much more honest and down to earth than the other gardening channels out there. Totally into it. I’m 3 years into my food forest and aquaculture project in the Andes Mountains. Watching and listening closely as I try to adapt your advice to this high altitude location on the equator.
A veritable wealth of information as always - although watching your videos is really time consuming because I always have to watch them twice to get everything :)
You are a great teacher.
Thanks for your gardening tips . I had to move our garden this fall because of construction at the house. Im the soil guy and the wife chooses the plants. Together we get things done. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
This is a really good video, any gardener should be listening closely.
Love your style of ‘Dry Humour’ or is that sarcasm?!?😂
Not to mention I dig your information, love your work!
Thanks for all the information and smiles!!
Everyone needs to listen to the AEA podcasts and absorb as much information as possible, it has helped me greatly! Alao anyone not watching to the end of these videos is really missing out on some gold!
You’re the BEST, Jesse.
I am ever thankful for the soil that I have nurtured. Albeit, I have a bit of everything over time when it comes it comes to diseases and such. Those beet leaves really caught my attention. Every now and then I find a spot where they grow beautifully. Some of my plots were wildly (passionately) gardened in 50yrs before me. It seems to be ‘richly diverse’ but keeps me on my toes.
I have a very small garden, I buy compost from big box stores - the amount of weed seeds and plastic it has in it is, horrific.
I haven't found those but they tend to have huge chunks of wood and sifting it is annoyingly time consuming.
Just finished my second year gardening, and I've intentionally approached this as No Till.
Weeds haven't been anything crazy, except crab grass. If I didn't keep up on crab grass, it got crazy...I didn't keep up on crab grass by the tail end of the season....
I love your videos! Now I just need to find your desert Utah counterpart. You said soil drainage like 15 time in this video and I can tell you my garden has no issues draining... My problem is water retention (which you did mention once or twice) and rocks :)
If I use a cultivator and then disc ( beds will be set up at 1m x 50m tractor wheels will run only in the pathways ) this is a once of set up, then covered with weedmat , to kill weeds, then cover crop. Flat drip tape , fully gravity feed, were an of the grid farm that have never been on the grid.Lol. loads of cattle manure, eregrostis hay , just so blessed. Love this channel
Fabulous information, thank you for sharing.
Great video! I have decent soils to 4-5" deep, then serious clay & compaction issues. This video will help motivate me that there is hope!❤❤
Ya know, I noticed back when you mentioned dad jokes, that it rhymes with bad jokes.
Really well.
I feel ya on that...
Compaction warning!
If you live in a subdivision, many are constructed on house pads that were mechanically compacted. Which means buldozers, compactors and rollers smushed the soil particles so rightly and so deeply that your foundation won't move. Great for your house, but sucks for gardens and new trees.
Which is why it is so difficult to get trees to grow in new subdivisions.
Good luck digging in that stuff.
they also tend to strip the top soil on purpose to plant grass in new places
Even though my house is 20 years old im still dealing with the fact they stripped it to the subsoil
@@davidakerlund6296 Oof. That sounds rough. Do you grow in raised beds?
It's also possible the contractor buried construction waste in the yard, raked over 1-2 inches of top soil and planted a lawn. I started no-till raised beds in my backyard and after a couple years, plant roots and soil critters started pushing old bricks to the surface! I'm using them for edging. I think this shows the real power of no-till.... I can't imagine the work of actually digging all the bricks out on day one of the garden. But by just adding compost to beds, adding wood chips and leaves on the walkways and continuous growing, the bricks were loosened and pushed up naturally.
@@bethhubbs9937 no to raised beds but i rotionally grazed chickens and guinea pigs for about 10 years, did chop and drop then added by hand 60 yards of compost as well as bringing all food waste from work home for 10 years. Ive been broadforking for 2 years now and just this summer managed to successfully grow carrots for the first time ever
Love your humour mate. Keep it up 👍🏻
Thanks Jesse
@ :13 That is exactly what we had when we got here. Oy. What a pain.
After 8 years, it's a lot better, but ALL new beds need remedial action for a couple years.
The soil being passive aggressive is so true! 😂
Thanks!
Amazing, thank YOU!
I have seen compaction effect first hand. I planted straight in compost I bought thinking could, but it seemingly had mostly clay. That bed is the least productive
Yeah. My compacted clay is REALLY an issue.
Well explained thanks
Bought a property that was heavily treed, but everything died in a wildfire 10 years ago. Grass and noxious weeds have taken over since then. Just starting the process now. I have entire areas that seem to be completely void of topsoil. Will be an interesting experiment to see if we can bring anything back.
Good job
Jesse - great video. Thanks a lot as you confirmed the line of thinking I had in my email. Also I got your book a couple of days ago and just started it. I can tell it's going to be a huge help.
Really! Horses in Kentucky, probably don't see many of those 😅
"... like I always say weeds are the emergency solar panels that the soil throws up when you aren't doing your job so you can kind of think of weeds like the soil being passive aggressive which makes me laugh a little bit." A bit, just a bit, where did your sense of humour die. : )))))
This needs to be a meme! And Google says it isn't, so let us make it so.
ThankQ
Thanks
One of the things I'm noticing on your videos is fresh compost on all the beds and my thoughts are that the ideal organic matter I'm your soil profile is being breached and the dilution of the rock ( mineral) content of the soil is taking place where you end up with spent organic matter making up your root layer, instead of soil with mineral content over time .
I don't see this being a problem over the short term but over the long term I would imagine it becoming a problem
Bend a 6 inch handle in your rebar pentameter and you will have a better time.
Stick it under a 2x4 and stand on the 2x4 while pulling the rebar to the desired angle.
... just ask you local construction site for a bent piece. Simpler still...
A bird in the hand, is worth two bent pieces of rebar at a local construction site.
Except when its a finch, As a flock of finches can be very charming.
Excellent set of tips. Do you have any followups from your older video on Broadforks?
Also can't wait to see your end of season thoughts on grafting!
Bermuda grass and crab grass are my biggest problems. I even sacrificed a spring/summer with a silage tarp and surrounded my garden with a 6ft. barrier. I've considered seeing if there's market for those grasses! ( I started my garden on what was pasture land of Johnson, bermuda, crab, and all your other favorites.)
A few times during the summer pull up the crabgrass carefully without malice and look at the roots. It has the most beautiful exodate-driven rhyzosheaths anyone could hope for. I try to knock that biology off the roots and use it to inoculate other areas of the garden (direct soil transfer or compost tea). Compost the rest in place.
Interesting. I've always just pulled it and fed it to the chickens.@@jvin248
Could someone please post some shots of rhyzosheaths (different plants)? It'll help us noobs know what to look for.
Good vid
Heading to Argentina soon, probobly need ur contact info...
Hey Jesse, can you please discuss how to convert a farm that used chemicals and weed killers into a healthy organic farm? Is it even possible after years of roundup and others?
It became painfully obvious after we moved onto our property that the drainage from my neighbors property had been washing over where I had established our garden for maybe decades. He loves nuking his borders with all sorts of herbicides so I c e been dealing with remediation problems. First thing I did was berm the property line and on the first big rain it completely washed his side away. That was a win, but after 4 years I'm still seeing yellowing and stunted growth in the former flood zone. Any pointers?
Oof. No easy solution there. Cover crops will obviously help. Stopping their property from draining onto yours obviously. Building buffers. Raising the beds as much as possible, too, in that flood zone. Sometimes it simply takes time.
@notillgrowers Thanks Farmer Jesse!
This is what I would do in your situation. (I'm very small suburban gardener. Tiny. Think patio size. Tiny patio size. Did I mention tiny? Good. Now that we understand it.)
drain the liquid. move it to some holding system that can act like a sponge. Why? Because I don't want that stuff going further into the ecosystem. Then, some form of biological agent to suck that herbicide in (maybe there's some nasty plant that laughs at the specific herbicide or some organism that likes eating these molecules? )
Grasses might be a good idea because I bet your neighbor has a lawn. Those herbicides are designed to kill only non-grasses. There's some beautiful ornamental native grasses that might be resilient.
And then, time for the decay to happen if possible. throw a quick growing seed plant and look at the growth. Alternate and move the dump zone so that it doesn't concentrate too much in one area. (As a thought, use that captured herbicide to spray around the house foundation. You don't really want plants up next to your house foundation walls.)
another solution, if you're on good terms with this neighbor is.. describe the problem and suggest easy ways that would be acceptable to your neighbor to help with the herbicide issue. It could be as simple as installing a flower border or gravel border or just a less toxic herbicide or you maintaining that part of the property for your neighbor.
(I do something similar. Every fall, I offer "free leaf raking" and it's a win/win. I get some exercise, lovely fallen leaves and the good will of my neighbors.)
Good luck.
You can't get blood from a turnip. Get a full soil test and check all your nutrient levels. Yes, the herbicides could be an issue but if your garden has essentially been a floodplain for decades, the soil may have experienced significant nutrient leaching. A lot of nutrients are water soluble and simply float away. That said, look up the green bean herbicide test and try that with your soil. I'd try it with and without fertilizer to see what happens if seeds and seedlings are given sufficient nutrients. If your seedlings have sufficient nutrients and look like they are experiencing herbicide stunting, you may just have to move your garden. :(
I am going to start a garden for the first time ever.
I am wanting to adopt the no till philosophy/method.
I have a few questions:
Will I have to add new compost every year? This seems like a huge cost.
If I had compost every year won't I eventually make a mountain where it was once flat?
I am just thinking that if no till makes living soil then why would I need to add compost/dirt each year. Is the goal to get the soil healthy so you add nothing extra?
Danke!
Amazing, thank YOU!
@notillgrowers
Where did you get your broad fork?
penetrometer comment was hilarious!
Can you save Potatoes that haven't ripened for seed next year, having lots of troubles with slugs and looking for ways around them as waiting for potatoes to ripen to save for seed allows slugs to damage most the crop limiting storage. Thanks
❤ hero
I've heard elsewhere that incorporating compost or charcoal into soil is like feeding an animal with burned bones. Fresh organic manner, like wook, grass, etc, would be much more beneficial, because it'd boost the saprophytes in the soil, starting the whole chain of soil decomposers/recyclers, thus getting more mobile carbon.
What do you think? How old and refined is the compost you put in?
I am not sure I understand the burned bones thing, but both are beneficial. Ideally, you are adding carbonaceous mulches, mature compost (six months to one year old give or take), and also adding living plants and fresh grass mulches. Biodiversity is as important to crop selection as inputs.
Was it not scientifically proven charcoal is super porous and so a ton of microorganisms take each tiny charcoal piece as their home, and so charcoal can help microorganisms? At least I remember a no-till enthusiast I knew telling me about it, she would talk about soil science almost every day haha
I think I'm in trouble I can't push a piece of rebar 2 inches into the ground.
Hey, Jesse. Wondering i f you would ever recommend adding MORE than 1-2" of compost initially? We have compacted Mississippi clay soil. Love listening to plant/soil/nature nerds. Haha
Also, (sorry) could we use our own hay on our garden instead of straw? I mean, it is free.
Come out to the Central Valley of California. So much bad farming practice 😂
I've been gardening/small farming for many years and still have problems raising seeds to viable transplants. I don't have an issue getting them to germinate but going from germination to transplant is a non-started for most of my transplants, except for tomatoes/peppers. Do you have info/videos on this? It's a limiting factor for wat I grow and appreciate any help!
lazy backyard gardener's dream, marketgardener's nightmare: my backyard compost is the best for a nice suprise, this year i had melons growing even tho i never planted them, they simply grew from the store bought melon's seed that was thrown into the compost🙄 luckyly this was only in my backyard but i guess it's better than the weeds (tomatoes and pumpkins like this method as well haha)
Well, its settled then.
I'm Awesome.
With a capital A. 👍
Weeds are my nemesis. I had to give up growing strawberries because the battle of the weeds was an exercise in futility. Other issues I can handle like balancing PH, nutrient issues or compactness. I know that mulch works and constant weeding. I even tried weed blanket but all to no avail. What to do?
A lot of folks grow strawberries in landscape fabric for that reason (which I'm assuming is what the weed blanket is?). Heavy mulches are the only alternative. It's just a slow, weed-susceptible crop. Do a year of getting the weed bank in check and then plant them in the fall. That might help.
I will try that. Thanks.@@notillgrowers
Because strawberries can be planted in the fall, they are sometimes an ideal candidate for soil solarization. There's a lot of information on it out there. Cover the soil with a black plastic during the hottest part of the summer and keep a drip irrigation system running enough for the soil to remain moist several inches deep for a couple of months. Then plant
They are called Straw-berries for a reason. Mulch them deeply in straw! Keeps the weeds down and helps them survive cold winters. Or grow them in landscape fabric or black plastic mulch where each mother or daughter plant is in a hole in the fabric/plastic. Strawberries natural growth habits do not lend well to perfect spacing and soil cultivation methods for easy and regular weed control in bare soil like other crops do, using things like sturup hoes or wire weeders. Mulch the heck out of them (straw or plastics) or don't bother growing them.
I ve been mulching my beds intensively last couple of years. Lots of compost no more tilling only broadforking. But I have serious problem with voles now. And there seems to be no effective way to get rid of them. This is a huge plague growing year by year and especially early in the year in spring becomes a big problem when the voles like to eat my new plantings. Anyone a good remedy
We had a big vole problem for a while. We cured it with a cat. 😁
@mslorischoolsocialworker same here. 2 outside cats. Make sure you feed them just regular cat food so they will hunt. One had a big field mouse "prize" for me yesterday morning, in fact.
Side note, 288K followers for this channel is great, but Bill Gates has 274K acres purchased in America cause he knows what's coming. We need more folks growing food with sustainable practice, and I greatly appreciate this channel and what you do.
Have you heard of Home Grown National Park?
I don’t know much about it, but I love seeing lawns turned into gardens.
@jasonfougere3274 - Take a break from foxnews, you’re at peak paranoia.
@lilolgreyhairdlady4093 I haven't, but I will check it out. Thanks!
@canadiangemstones7636 LOL, thanks, friend. I'm a farmer, and I see the prices going up. We are in unprecedented times with climate change, and I believe we have been depleting resources while our global population is outgrowing those resources. I am concerned, and rightfully so.
my weeds are just straight aggressive
how to plant fertile plants
My soil WILL NOT grow beets and carrots. The seeds germinate and they sit there all year growing leaves. What is going on!?!?
Grazon!?
Moles and voles tunnel freely in our garden chasing food sources
That might be a sign of high earthworm numbers 🤔
They love slugs.
"Are you a nerd? Lets go."
compaction is why no till is so stupid. We are not big farms and can till in a way that is actually beneficial to the land. I till anytime my soil is compacted. Working leaves and compost into my hard clay soil and then covering the loose soil with mulch too keep the microbes and fungi safe from the sun and ready to grow in there freshly aerated soil.
That comment about Rhizobia was pretty misleading, since they are dependent on an energy supply from happy roots in well aerated soil, and produce their own tiny anaerobic chamber inside the root nodules where they can fix the nitrogen. The nitrogen they fix comes from the air, so those nodules actually need good aeration, not compaction.
That note on Rhizobia is in defense of beneficial microbes that operate in more anaerobic conditions and isn't about compaction. Apologies if it came off that way. But the nodules absolutely help the rhizobia regulate oxygen in a variety of ways including an oxygen diffusion barrier and oxygen-binding leghemoglobin, etc.. You're right about the high energy needs, but some nuance in these topics gets lost because, well, it's a youtube video 🤷
@@notillgrowersWhat I meant to point out was that they function in and prefer an aerobic environment, so in a practical sense, they're only anaerobic on a technicality. Lumping them in with anaerobes is misleading if you're talking to people who don't understand the nuance. I love the way you acknowledge nuance in general, but this one felt like lying by telling the truth, though you obviously weren't trying to deceive.
Lol. "prefers not to be smashed by beavers". Listing possible seed packet direction notes could be a whole comedy sketch. Or a short video seeking lots of clever and mischievous ideas in the comment section.
Farmer Jesse, You're in Kentucky, but you don't sound like your IN Kentucky (no accent). What brought you to Kentucky?
Passive aggressive soil 😂😂😂
When you said some anaerobic bacteria aren't all bad and actually help with nitrogen fixing and "really appreciate compacted soil"- doesn't this occur in the rhizosheath and its an anaerobic zone created purposely in a healthy uncompacted soil microbiome? This wouldn't be a benefit of having compacted soil? Sorry to nerd out nerd....😂
Fire ants.
I used to have a compaction problem, now my topsoil is light as air...I have a mole problem now, is what I'm saying.
Thanks!
Thank you! 🙌
Thanks
Amazing, thank YOU!
Danke!
Amazing, thank YOU!
Thanks!
Amazing, thank YOU!