I am a fan of Back to Reality! I have struggled here in the Okanagan in BC with porous soil. Lotsa rocks and gravel here. So..I Married Mr.Hugelkulture to Ruth Stout in a,, ahem., .Raised Bed . I put double layers of cardboard down , tossed in dead poplar or elm or cottonwood. and then .covered that all up with leaves and covered the leaves up with composted horse manure , more leaves and then organically conditioned / screened soil and the best moldy hay I could find. I planted my garlic on November 5th 2018. That gave it a head start. Everything came up WOW in a yard where nothin grew but weeds ! By August of 2019 the 12 inches of hay was down to about 3 inches and the soil was so soft under it ! That seems to have taken on a life of it's own and many more are popping up !! Thank You Thank you for the inspiration and creativity that helped me to go get em ! Bless you !
Great video! As always, you take a subject, break it down into its essential components, and then explain it in an accurate and easy to understand way. Many of us who have gardened for years discover, as Ruth did, that nature is the best teacher and simplicity in gardening is often a better approach. The key is developing good soil to support whatever plants you grow. Gardeners who think they need to rotate crops may not realize that succession planting and square foot gardening can achieve that desire. You say you're not a gardening expert, but the analysis and effort you've demonstrated over the years since you left your van should make you think differently.
Working with a small space, for me, means rotation is very low priority. I’m so much more concerned with just making sure everything is doing alright. And like you said, sometimes things need to go where it makes the most sense. For example, I have a huge tree that covers part of my growing space, so I need to make sure that things in or near that shady area are things that will do best with a little less sun. Great video, as always!
My approach to gardening is very similar to yours. I have my tomato bed, celery bed, pepper bed, potato bed and different beds for onions. I practice polyculture to the extremes, sometimes too much (shading mostly). This year I established perennial cover crops in 3 of my raised beds (creeping thyme and oregano). No need to mulch to preserve moisture, (plus it gives the soil organisms living roots through the fall, winter and spring) the plants did it on their own. It worked wonderfully, with an added benefit I will get to. When I harvested my sweet potatoes, onions and regular potatoes, I discovered I had a huge population of jumping worms. I grow these crops in a Ruth Stout manner except with shredded leaves. As it turns out, I created the perfect environment for the jumping worms and they took full advantage. As far as I know, I did not have jumping worms last year, I may have introduced them while collecting leaves last fall. All I know is they changed my soil and contaminated about 6 cubic yards of finished leaf mold, big bummer. As I have been taking plants out of my raised beds, fortunately I have not discovered any jumping worms. I believe it is because I established perennial cover crops instead of mulching with shredded leaves, as I normally do. I return nutrition to my raised beds in the fall. I feed the soil with comfrey tea, add a fresh layer of finished compost, then cover with shredded leaves. I will continue doing this, because the jumping worms die out during the winter and by mulching in the late fall they will not contaminate the mulch layer. This was the 3rd year for my current garden. The 1st year I did use inorganic fertilizers, last year I used organic fertilizers and this year I used no fertilizers. I am trying to work with the soil organisms to open up the nutrition I add in the fall. In my opinion, crop rotation in a garden situation is not needed, unless you have a soil borne disease. Even that, if you have the proper soil biology the plants will fight off those diseases on their own. Enjoy your videos! If you click on the B in the red circle it will bring you to my channel. I have a couple garden tours and my 1st video on the jumping worms.
This is why I am going for a perennial food forest. Fruit/nut trees with thornless fruit bushes in between, perennial strawberries line my paths with perennial beans (Scarlet Runner Beans) lining my landscape archways. Compost in the spring, mulch in the fall. Makes for a beautiful landscape and the least amount of work. I couldn't feed my family for a year off of it, but I can at least put less strain on our food system, have more delicious produce, and watch my children learn and see how truly remarkable nature can be.
so im a little confused, I was looking up scarlet runner beans and they all say their annuals, can you tell me where you got a perennial variety? or what growing zone your in?
@@MrThatguy333 zone 8 they're perennial, but if you're not in zone 7-11, there is two ways to never buy them again because they can be hard to find. Leave the seed pods on the plants until when you shake the pod, you hear the seeds rattle and then just save them separated (like each seed in a section of a plastic tackle box) and replant in the spring or the other option is dig up the roots and store them in sand, replanting the roots in the spring. Hope that helps in your journey.
@@ellencox8415 oh! Johnny's seeds has some and I'm in zone 8b, I'll get some. I appreciate the advice and I'm looking forward to having a new perennial ❤️
I definitely don't bother with crop rotation in my garden. Only I move any plants at all is because I may find a better spot for it. Other than that, I grow the same plants in the same places every single year and amend with compost and it works just fine.
This is good to know as I embark on our first deep mulch winter. So far, 2 beds are completely tucked in for the season with 3 more partially completed and 3 more awaiting creation. Trying to figure out how to move everything to cooperate with companion vs non-companion wishes of certain plants is a logistical mind game! Thanks for the good info.
As always an excellent video with very even handed analysis. We only have room for four 10ft x 4ft raised beds. Sometimes we rotate, other times we don't. So far (25+ years) it doesn't seem to make much difference either way. The prevailing weather each years has a far greater impact on crop yields .
I think the key to both Ruth Stout and Charles Dowding's comments on the matter is that both promote methods of gardening that are centered around soil ecosystem health. For systems that don't amend the soil heavily with organic material, even if they're technically "organic", crop rotation can be a lot more important.
Great video. We do use crop rotation to the best of our abilities, but we also find that rotation helps with our need to keep species seperate for seed saving, but in truth as you have said, when you are putting so much back in to the soil and working intensively in a space much smaller then commercial monoculture crops, there is probably little point, although it also can't hurt. We never plant our tomatoes back where tomatoes were cause there always seems to be volunteers lol. Thanks for sharing, great to see a video 😀
Love this. Great topic. My grandfather use to stress over this... till. One season as he was putting down anoter layer compost, bone meaf, I stopped him. Look at all those red wiggles. And there was tons. Working up a storm. H3 said why am I stressing on what plant? It's so high fertility, I'll keep doing what i do by side dress all seasons an in Nov-Dec-Jan throw a cover crop of peas here an there. To this day... I water by my diluted manure tea, side dress, an my oxygenated peas which we always run out of by mid Aug in the freezer
I'm not entirely sure that it is the mulching that prevents soil depletion over time, as composting in place is. When you grow tomatoes in one place, harvest the fruit and then let the leaves and stems decompose in place, that will add back to the soil *exactly* what was taken by the plant. It makes sense when you think of asparagus. Mulched or not, the needle-like leaves will fall on the ground where the plant lives, and add back to the soil what was taken. I think... :)
That's right, just it's not exactly what was consumed by the plant since we harvest a fraction of the plant biomass (leaves, fruit, stems, ...). So to complete the cycle you should give back to the soil some fertilizer, ideally what is left after you have digested your vegetables 😅
What a wonderful way to express this. I still constantly hear experienced gardeners saying they have to do it, for the pest and nutrient reasons, which as you point out are mostly unfounded. Of course you had me with the Ruth quotes, I have the tell it like it is part down, working to get the same garden chops in a less easy location, Colorado, where weather has its whim, and you can go to hail anytime. One thing you could add is regarding pests and disease, health plants can better withstand, so that should be the focus. Yes I grow tomatoes right back where I have had blight, because it is the best place, and if I have to rotate nightshades, that is the majority of what I grow. Some blight occasional creeps in at the end of the year where it doesn’t matter. Of course the answer is “more hay”.
I highly recommend reading Ruth Stouts' book "How to have a green thumb without an aching back". If you are into gardening you will thoroughly enjoy it! (If you can find one-1950's.).
I guess many people still think that plants rely solely on their roots to get the nutrients they need. In thruth they're in constant (chemical) communication with the soil bacteria and THEY get what the plant wants in exchange for sugar the plant creates through photosythesis (of course this is oversymplyfied 😆). Rotting mulch feeds the soil bacteria, this is why the Ruth Stout method is so brilliant. If anyone wants to get knowledgeable about how plants interact with the living soil I would highly recommend the YT channel of Biologist Dr. Elaine Ingham or one of her speeches on other channels. She explains very well. Enjoy!
Crop rotation and cash crop monocultures are basically inventory management for large scale business. Like you said, home gardeners are neither large scale nor (for the most part) a business. Indeed for our situation a chaos garden polyculture system gives the most output for effort.
Thank you! Great little video. My mother had a patch near the back door of her terraced house where a friend would plant two rows of runner beans (Scarlet runners) for her every year. In return she made him a fruit cake. Without fail she would have a great crop of beans some of which would be stored in her freezer waiting for our visits. I could never understand how the beans could grow in the same small patch of soil every year.
Great video, thanks for answering that question, I'd come to the same conclusion but haven't yet tried not moving things as it's my first year using the Ruth Stout method. And a lovely surprise to see my name at the end in the credits! :o) Thanks Rachel
Interesting approach, even though on tropical gardens where all year you need to grow things, it is kind of good to do it so you have a varied diet. Poled areas rotate tomatoes, cucumber, yam, luffa and beans. Bed areas have leafy things, root vegetables, or even onion and cilantro on dry months. But some plants take the whole year to grow like taro and its relatives and cassava, so they do have their own reserved areas with no rotation. So you end up doing a bit of everything.
I would start to rotate next year for my potatos due to them having scabs this year. Not sure where they came from but definitely don’t want to plant them in the same place next year. Also going to use new potato seed to prevent infection.
Agree wholeheartedly both with your explanation and your conclusions. Great video, well-explained and I love your graphics. What software do you use to make and animate them?
Huh, now I'm more relaxed :-). I've a small garden, which means, approx. 50qm. So crop rotation would give me a strong head ace. There is no place to rotate. Today I stepped on your video and found some interesting answers to my questions. I did not mulch that much, but I started with gardening 2 year ago. So I'm still on the learning curve. I'll try it out in my next season, without rotating, but mulching. Let's see the outcome 🙂. Thanks for sharing.
The only garden crop I've heard is important to move around is garlic. I'm curious if you have had experienced increased amounts of rust and other pathogens by keeping garlic in the same plot. The theory is that the fungi that feed on garlic will be attracted to it and over time they can produce more spores which infects more of the garlic over time. I've also not researched how/if it varies in colder climates.
Hi guys! LOve your videos... lots of fun, and scientific explanations for what you are doing and the expecting results. Talking about that... there had passed already 6 years since you installed your Hugelkuture trenches... may you please do an update for that? Are the logs still in there, has all decayed? Which crops worked well on that? Thanks in advance...
Dr Elaine from the soil food web says it's best not to rotate crops so that the bacteria growing can specialize over time to best benefit the plants growing in the various areas therefore increasing plant health and decreasing pests due to healthier plants.
I haven’t seen one of your vlogs in awhile. Good to see you again! Thanks for all your common sense when it comes to gardening. I’m always seeking what’s most practical and time saving when it comes to this endeavor. I have an unrelated question, however, if you or someone else could expand on. I’ve heard a lot of sources warn against procuring spoiled hay from just anywhere. Do you derive yours from fields that employ organic practices, and if so is it hard to locate that material? Cheers!
Great video! Thanks for sharing! We are moving back to the city and will participate in a community garden, they use crop rotation and that is new to us (as we use permaculture methods and just plant things all mixed/ together and a lot like in your video’s), as we are new in the group/community we don’t feel like it’s our place to say their system of choice is nonsense 😂 but this video kind of sums up what I think about it. Maybe next year 😅 I do think it’s interesting to try out planting in this way, just to learn and understand different perspectives.
On the topic of pests... My potato plants did wonderfully all summer then suddenly they all started to die back a bit earlier than I thought they should have. When I harvested the other day, I could barely find any potatoes. My first suspect is voles because I found some collapsed tunnels under the mulch in another bed and an ornamental grass in my neighbors bed had it's roots eaten off. How do you keep burrowing pests out of a Ruth Stout bed?
Hi, I really love your videos on the Ruth Stout method! You definitely have the gift of teaching. I just put my hay down in Septimber of last year and it's now March. I have purchased some chicken manure to fertilize my garden with because I just started this method and my dirt is not rich enough to not fertilize yet. My question is do I remove the hay and put down the chicken manure and then put the hay back, or do I simply put the chicken manure on top of the hay and water it in?
Hey Scott, we haven't actually used any manure in our garden, so I can't speak from personal experience. However, I THINK it would be best to pull aside the hay first, unless it has already broken down almost completely. If you were to put it on top of a thick layer of hay, chances are some of it would eventually wash down into the soil with the water/rain. But it may take a while. Plus, burying the hay may actually promote the hay seeds (if there are any) to germinate, and that would be pretty undesirable. If anyone else has done this before, hopefully they can add reply as well. Either way, please let us know how this method works out for you! I'm really glad that you've enjoyed our videos :)
Ana primavesi, very respected organic soil scientist in brasil, shows in her most important book, how even with crop rotation, plantations have a gradual decline in productivity, although a much slower one. This may or may not be common knowledge in agronomic schools, for I am not an agronomist. Also, the hundreds of studies citated by her are from the 60s and 70s, and I have not read the most recent ones.
Well, even with all the composting, etc, there's still nutrient loss from leaching plus you can't really return all the nutrients back (unless you use human poop as manure).
But what about a crop like potatoes? Since the nematodes may built up in the soil? Don't you need to rotate them? Or does that not happen in the ruth stout method as you put the potatoes on top of the soil?
The importance of crop rotation increases with scale. The most important question is to ask "How many people do I need to produce food for?" (The second is "If I fail, can they get food from somewhere else?") If the answer is less than 5 or so, crop rotation is probably not important. The more food you need to produce, the more you need to mitigate even the slightest risk. Another way to look at it is that planning a good crop rotation is a professional skill. It's something you have to learn to do farming for a living (pun intended). That being said a basic three to four year rotation isn't all that complicated. You'll have to track the type of plant you're growing, not the specific species. The four main types are root crops, beans and peas, brassicas, and alliums. Rotate those and you're well on the way. (In this rotation you'd sprinkle anything that didn't fit, like tomatoes, randomly.) ps. If you want to see the best presented version of this, google "dig for victory leaflet no. 1".
Consider the possibility that crop rotation might be beneficial when growing some plants even if it doesn't matter for most crops. I would guess that Ruth Stout didn't replant tomatoes in the same spot every year. Thanks for the video.
Most back yard gardeners only have a few beds, or a small(ish) plot. I just don’t see the benefit of moving a crop 10 feet to the left. The bugs will still find them. The disease is still in the area. Better to keep feeding the soil and keep the plants happy. And have fun. Gardening may be a lot of work, but so rewarding too.
To be fair in the same Dowding book, he states that sowing seeds under specific lunar phases will have differing impacts on yield of said crop...which has never been demonstrated in real scientific studies....so there's that.
A lot of people do it because they have animals on the land. Having cows or pigs in the same place for too long may not be enough and you need to move the manure. Its smarter to rotate the crop and animals.
Well Derick to avoid pest and diseases in your garden you need good biology in your soil, it seems to me you are doing alright and are very productive. For some further tips Please check the Soil Food Web by Dr Elaine Ingham.
Well, crop rotation isnt complete nonsense, it depends on the situation and the crop. It really doesnt have anything to do with gsrdening, but farming. There isnt any hypothesisng necessary, it is literally only applied to large farms where they have an interest in maximising the efficiency of both they're tons of fertiliser, and having a buffer against a poor season that would affect one crop differently from another, like tomatoes. Imagine that you had a cold and wet summer, you might lose most of your crop to blight. Now those same conditions are great for broccoli or other crops thst might allow you at least break even at the end of the year. It was the backyard gardener with their relatively modest plots trying to emmulate the percieved success of large farms, adapting the wisdom to their endeavors with erroneous assumptions.
Your corn looks amazing this year! The scale most of us garden at is so much smaller than our ancestors, and the fact that we (hopefully) renew the soil with compost, mulch, etc., seems to make crop rotation unnecessary. Your point about moving crops in a small area to avoid pests also makes a lot of sense. My garden isn't large enough to keep the insects from walking the 40 feet to the new planting area. :)
Many people several hundred years ago followed the recommendations for farming in the Bible. The Bible recommended crop rotation. Mortgages used to be based on 7 yrs as recommended in the Bible. Today’s knowledge now better understands chemicals, soil structure, and life under the surface of the soil. Soil can be tested for deficiencies and corrected. Assuming hay is multi cultured it should have a little of every thing your soil needs. This doesn’t address pests and disease. If rotating helps you avoid disease and pests then I would choose rotation over pesticides, herbicides and disease fighting chemicals. But the choice belongs to each individual.
But I have lost my onions three years now dam worms. I am not going to grow them next year. It’s disheartening, (ya ya but they are my babies). I grow weird things for the fun of it not to see them die. If I put in 70 different crops I want results that I can eat and share. Just because. Even nematodes didn’t work. Changing raised beds didn’t work. I think they are everywhere, and the first year they were excellent. Reaped huge rewards. But not since. Any ideas?
Crop rotation is a complete waste of time for the gardener. We did it for years before we realized we were only parroting others. Since we stopped, our gardens have never done better. Most of our gardener friends think we're crazy, of course!
I agree crop rotation is mostly useless for small gardens, nature regularly grows even the same annuals in the same spot. As long as soil biology is high, crop rotation is pointless. Even large monoculture farms could probably do without if they used more biology friendly solutions like cover crops, grazing residuals, humic acid, etc.
@@eb1684 wow, that’s extreme digging up perennials, I’ve never heard of that except for transplants. I’ve seen rhubarb thrive on even bad soil, year after year, it’s hardy.., Maybe you’re trolling😂
@@TheNewMediaoftheDawn Thanks' for the quick response! I was just kidding-That was taken out or Rush's book. Please read it-you will LOVE every word. What is trolling?
I have read and watched videos. Crop rotations saves money by building healthy soil and organic matter. It acts as a great soil amendment without buying all those fertilizers. You plant a nitrogen fixator like a legume. Follow this up with a leafy green than needs nitrogen, then with a fruit (potatoes) that uses nutrients the leafy greens didn't use, then a root that the legumes, leafy greens, nor fruit used a lot of. This is a cheap way to build soil health and organic matter.
Potatoes are heavy nutrient users, so I expect you'd have to heavily amend the soil after the season with a very thick layer of mulch. The weather also makes a big difference.
I have bean planting potatoes in the same spot for 5 years now. Potatoes are a heavy feeder, so you have to ad allot of mulch and maybe other fertilities each year.
I think it also depends on the pest pressure. I live in an area where potatoes are heavily grown in folks gardens, but my own weren’t in an area where any had grown before. I still ended up with more nasty potato grubs then I expected. I have a (currently small) market garden & a family garden, so I have plenty of room to rotate something else into that spot for a couple years, move the potatoes over, and let the buggers die off and get confused. Meanwhile, I’ll be leaving lots of other things in their spots - I usually rotate legumes and heavy nitrogen feeders so I don’t have to spend on nitrogen amendments.
When so much of the soil is re-builded, they yeah no need of that. What I do is to use some compost and I dig a small hole, I place the roots of let say tomato transplant and fill the gap with compost. Minimal compost usage, soft of fresh soil every year.
Wait...WAIT....WHAT ABOUT FUNGUS WHICH CAN HOLD OVER IN THE SOIL AND EFFECT NEXT YEARS CROP...ESPECIALLY IN SAME FAMILY...IE..TOMATOES, POTATOES...... I have never rotated in garden for nutrients ( compost , worm castings from worm farm, etc) but rotated to escape funguses.....mildews.....
Pests and disease arent as much of a issue for home gardener . Big mono farms are not only the same species .In most crops the plants are genetically identical . If a disease Can get hold of one plant they own them all In the 1970s the wealthiest man in the USA his name was Richard Ludwig. Shakey's pizza the first big national chain was his hobby . He'd spend months making decisions on what toppings go on a new pizza. He spent a afternoon developing a an . He had 2 giant pulp mills built on barges in Japan. They were to big to fit in the panama canal and had to sail around the horn to get to south America. He'd bought a piece of land the size of Connecticut . He stripped the la d bare then he had trees planted fast growing hardwood . Well after a few years he got a disease. Normally a easy problem to fix but he'd planted the same tree and covered a area as big as Connecticut. Then it was a giant desert in the rainforest.
Not growing anything on a given field to let it grow back to full health is a good idea, except doing it only once every 4 years is useless. People who actually did this type of rotation successfully in the middle ages did it this way : a given field only had crops once every 4 years so that the soil had 3 years to recover. Tilling is incredibly destructive to the soil, which is why it needs so long to recover. Nowadays tilling has brought many soils from 5 % organic matter content to 1%, especially in Europe... To grow back to full health, you would have to let the soil alone for decades... Regarding rotation it's useless in living soil farming, IE with a soil always covered by cover crops, carbon based mulch or veggie crops. Because there is all the nutrients you want in the mulch or cover crop (if it's a good multi species cover crops). Another aspect that's been discovered is that phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are absolutely USELESS. First it's been discovered that the method for measuring those two elements only measured about a third of what was actually available to plants during their growing cycle... So we've been recommending fertilization based on false data. Second, in a living soil garden, plants get phosphore and potassium through mycorhizae and bacteria who attack rocks. There's plenty of it, you're never gonna run out of them. Than leaves nitrogen. We now know that you don't really need nitrogen fertilizer either because a living soil will produce plenty, as long as you don't use mineral nitrogen, which prevents plants from growing mycorhizae...
The idea that it's nonsense is nonsensical in and of itself. People can smoke for years and never have a problem. Does that mean cigarettes are safe? Obviously not. Stout's assertion that it's nonsense, contrary to the preponderance of evidence that says otherwise, based on her claim that she has never needed it, is equally unfounded. Crop rotation is not a panacea or guaranteed preventative. It's one of a grower's tools. Knowing why, when, and how to use it is important.
@@eb1684 I think it's a bigger flex to own your own 60 ton backhoe and you rotate your black walnut tree and your parents tree. But the backhoe is not to be used for anything else, and needs a sign that says, "For black walnut tree rotation schedule only!"
I really appreciate you sharing my video in your description. Fantastic thoughts regarding crop rotation, thank you🌱
You are definitely right. I've been farming with Ruth Stout's method here in Northern Italy for ten years. I've never had any problems whatsoever.
I am a fan of Back to Reality! I have struggled here in the Okanagan in BC with porous soil. Lotsa rocks and gravel here. So..I Married Mr.Hugelkulture to Ruth Stout in a,, ahem., .Raised Bed . I put double layers of cardboard down , tossed in dead poplar or elm or cottonwood. and then .covered that all up with leaves and covered the leaves up with composted horse manure , more leaves and then organically conditioned / screened soil and the best moldy hay I could find. I planted my garlic on November 5th 2018. That gave it a head start. Everything came up WOW in a yard where nothin grew but weeds ! By August of 2019 the 12 inches of hay was down to about 3 inches and the soil was so soft under it ! That seems to have taken on a life of it's own and many more are popping up !! Thank You Thank you for the inspiration and creativity that helped me to go get em ! Bless you !
Woohoo! A new video!
Great video! As always, you take a subject, break it down into its essential components, and then explain it in an accurate and easy to understand way. Many of us who have gardened for years discover, as Ruth did, that nature is the best teacher and simplicity in gardening is often a better approach. The key is developing good soil to support whatever plants you grow. Gardeners who think they need to rotate crops may not realize that succession planting and square foot gardening can achieve that desire. You say you're not a gardening expert, but the analysis and effort you've demonstrated over the years since you left your van should make you think differently.
This was an excellent explanation on why it's not relevant for most gardeners. Love it.
Working with a small space, for me, means rotation is very low priority. I’m so much more concerned with just making sure everything is doing alright. And like you said, sometimes things need to go where it makes the most sense. For example, I have a huge tree that covers part of my growing space, so I need to make sure that things in or near that shady area are things that will do best with a little less sun. Great video, as always!
My approach to gardening is very similar to yours. I have my tomato bed, celery bed, pepper bed, potato bed and different beds for onions. I practice polyculture to the extremes, sometimes too much (shading mostly).
This year I established perennial cover crops in 3 of my raised beds (creeping thyme and oregano). No need to mulch to preserve moisture, (plus it gives the soil organisms living roots through the fall, winter and spring) the plants did it on their own. It worked wonderfully, with an added benefit I will get to.
When I harvested my sweet potatoes, onions and regular potatoes, I discovered I had a huge population of jumping worms. I grow these crops in a Ruth Stout manner except with shredded leaves. As it turns out, I created the perfect environment for the jumping worms and they took full advantage.
As far as I know, I did not have jumping worms last year, I may have introduced them while collecting leaves last fall. All I know is they changed my soil and contaminated about 6 cubic yards of finished leaf mold, big bummer.
As I have been taking plants out of my raised beds, fortunately I have not discovered any jumping worms. I believe it is because I established perennial cover crops instead of mulching with shredded leaves, as I normally do.
I return nutrition to my raised beds in the fall. I feed the soil with comfrey tea, add a fresh layer of finished compost, then cover with shredded leaves. I will continue doing this, because the jumping worms die out during the winter and by mulching in the late fall they will not contaminate the mulch layer.
This was the 3rd year for my current garden. The 1st year I did use inorganic fertilizers, last year I used organic fertilizers and this year I used no fertilizers. I am trying to work with the soil organisms to open up the nutrition I add in the fall.
In my opinion, crop rotation in a garden situation is not needed, unless you have a soil borne disease. Even that, if you have the proper soil biology the plants will fight off those diseases on their own.
Enjoy your videos!
If you click on the B in the red circle it will bring you to my channel. I have a couple garden tours and my 1st video on the jumping worms.
New sub!!
This is why I am going for a perennial food forest. Fruit/nut trees with thornless fruit bushes in between, perennial strawberries line my paths with perennial beans (Scarlet Runner Beans) lining my landscape archways. Compost in the spring, mulch in the fall. Makes for a beautiful landscape and the least amount of work. I couldn't feed my family for a year off of it, but I can at least put less strain on our food system, have more delicious produce, and watch my children learn and see how truly remarkable nature can be.
so im a little confused, I was looking up scarlet runner beans and they all say their annuals, can you tell me where you got a perennial variety? or what growing zone your in?
@@MrThatguy333 zone 8 they're perennial, but if you're not in zone 7-11, there is two ways to never buy them again because they can be hard to find. Leave the seed pods on the plants until when you shake the pod, you hear the seeds rattle and then just save them separated (like each seed in a section of a plastic tackle box) and replant in the spring or the other option is dig up the roots and store them in sand, replanting the roots in the spring. Hope that helps in your journey.
@@ellencox8415 oh! Johnny's seeds has some and I'm in zone 8b, I'll get some. I appreciate the advice and I'm looking forward to having a new perennial ❤️
Awesome video, thanks for sharing!
I definitely don't bother with crop rotation in my garden. Only I move any plants at all is because I may find a better spot for it. Other than that, I grow the same plants in the same places every single year and amend with compost and it works just fine.
This is good to know as I embark on our first deep mulch winter. So far, 2 beds are completely tucked in for the season with 3 more partially completed and 3 more awaiting creation. Trying to figure out how to move everything to cooperate with companion vs non-companion wishes of certain plants is a logistical mind game! Thanks for the good info.
As always an excellent video with very even handed analysis. We only have room for four 10ft x 4ft raised beds. Sometimes we rotate, other times we don't. So far (25+ years) it doesn't seem to make much difference either way. The prevailing weather each years has a far greater impact on crop yields .
I love how something as simple as putting plants in the ground has conjured these little cult like rituals.
Always good to see your video pop up with some pearls. Yep, agree. I amend the soil, works fine without rotating. Your corn looks great. 🙂👍
Love your videos! I’ve always struggled with the concept of crop rotation but after watching your video, I might try ignoring it (for the most part)
I think the key to both Ruth Stout and Charles Dowding's comments on the matter is that both promote methods of gardening that are centered around soil ecosystem health. For systems that don't amend the soil heavily with organic material, even if they're technically "organic", crop rotation can be a lot more important.
Hope you’re doing well! I’m always excited to see a new video posted by you!
Great video. We do use crop rotation to the best of our abilities, but we also find that rotation helps with our need to keep species seperate for seed saving, but in truth as you have said, when you are putting so much back in to the soil and working intensively in a space much smaller then commercial monoculture crops, there is probably little point, although it also can't hurt. We never plant our tomatoes back where tomatoes were cause there always seems to be volunteers lol. Thanks for sharing, great to see a video 😀
Love this. Great topic. My grandfather use to stress over this... till. One season as he was putting down anoter layer compost, bone meaf, I stopped him. Look at all those red wiggles. And there was tons. Working up a storm. H3 said why am I stressing on what plant? It's so high fertility, I'll keep doing what i do by side dress all seasons an in Nov-Dec-Jan throw a cover crop of peas here an there. To this day... I water by my diluted manure tea, side dress, an my oxygenated peas which we always run out of by mid Aug in the freezer
I'm not entirely sure that it is the mulching that prevents soil depletion over time, as composting in place is. When you grow tomatoes in one place, harvest the fruit and then let the leaves and stems decompose in place, that will add back to the soil *exactly* what was taken by the plant. It makes sense when you think of asparagus. Mulched or not, the needle-like leaves will fall on the ground where the plant lives, and add back to the soil what was taken.
I think... :)
That's right, just it's not exactly what was consumed by the plant since we harvest a fraction of the plant biomass (leaves, fruit, stems, ...). So to complete the cycle you should give back to the soil some fertilizer, ideally what is left after you have digested your vegetables 😅
What a wonderful way to express this. I still constantly hear experienced gardeners saying they have to do it, for the pest and nutrient reasons, which as you point out are mostly unfounded. Of course you had me with the Ruth quotes, I have the tell it like it is part down, working to get the same garden chops in a less easy location, Colorado, where weather has its whim, and you can go to hail anytime. One thing you could add is regarding pests and disease, health plants can better withstand, so that should be the focus. Yes I grow tomatoes right back where I have had blight, because it is the best place, and if I have to rotate nightshades, that is the majority of what I grow. Some blight occasional creeps in at the end of the year where it doesn’t matter. Of course the answer is “more hay”.
I highly recommend reading Ruth Stouts' book "How to have a green thumb without an aching back". If you are into gardening you will thoroughly enjoy it! (If you can find one-1950's.).
I just bought her other book no-work garden. Ill look into that one too thank you
I guess many people still think that plants rely solely on their roots to get the nutrients they need. In thruth they're in constant (chemical) communication with the soil bacteria and THEY get what the plant wants in exchange for sugar the plant creates through photosythesis (of course this is oversymplyfied 😆). Rotting mulch feeds the soil bacteria, this is why the Ruth Stout method is so brilliant. If anyone wants to get knowledgeable about how plants interact with the living soil I would highly recommend the YT channel of Biologist Dr. Elaine Ingham or one of her speeches on other channels. She explains very well. Enjoy!
Thanks for the recommendation!
Crop rotation and cash crop monocultures are basically inventory management for large scale business. Like you said, home gardeners are neither large scale nor (for the most part) a business. Indeed for our situation a chaos garden polyculture system gives the most output for effort.
Im jealous of your Ruth stout collection! I found 1 using an interlibrary loan and I own 1. But they're not that common!
Thank you! Great little video. My mother had a patch near the back door of her terraced house where a friend would plant two rows of runner beans (Scarlet runners) for her every year. In return she made him a fruit cake. Without fail she would have a great crop of beans some of which would be stored in her freezer waiting for our visits. I could never understand how the beans could grow in the same small patch of soil every year.
Great video, thanks for answering that question, I'd come to the same conclusion but haven't yet tried not moving things as it's my first year using the Ruth Stout method. And a lovely surprise to see my name at the end in the credits! :o) Thanks Rachel
Interesting approach, even though on tropical gardens where all year you need to grow things, it is kind of good to do it so you have a varied diet. Poled areas rotate tomatoes, cucumber, yam, luffa and beans. Bed areas have leafy things, root vegetables, or even onion and cilantro on dry months. But some plants take the whole year to grow like taro and its relatives and cassava, so they do have their own reserved areas with no rotation. So you end up doing a bit of everything.
I would start to rotate next year for my potatos due to them having scabs this year. Not sure where they came from but definitely don’t want to plant them in the same place next year. Also going to use new potato seed to prevent infection.
Great exploration of the topic!
Agree wholeheartedly both with your explanation and your conclusions. Great video, well-explained and I love your graphics. What software do you use to make and animate them?
Huh, now I'm more relaxed :-). I've a small garden, which means, approx. 50qm. So crop rotation would give me a strong head ace. There is no place to rotate. Today I stepped on your video and found some interesting answers to my questions. I did not mulch that much, but I started with gardening 2 year ago. So I'm still on the learning curve. I'll try it out in my next season, without rotating, but mulching. Let's see the outcome 🙂. Thanks for sharing.
Covering it putting your garden to bed with grass clippings, leaves, compost, hay will add nutrition and weeds won't grow up thru it.
Miss you both. More video’s please.
I love this! Such good content!
Thanks so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
Hi , I really love your content ❤️
Thank you very much for posting these many Infos .... Really Appreciate it.
I usually plant a cover or green manure crop after what ever I have planted/ harvested so this is a sort of crop rotation.
The only garden crop I've heard is important to move around is garlic. I'm curious if you have had experienced increased amounts of rust and other pathogens by keeping garlic in the same plot. The theory is that the fungi that feed on garlic will be attracted to it and over time they can produce more spores which infects more of the garlic over time. I've also not researched how/if it varies in colder climates.
Hi guys! LOve your videos... lots of fun, and scientific explanations for what you are doing and the expecting results. Talking about that... there had passed already 6 years since you installed your Hugelkuture trenches... may you please do an update for that? Are the logs still in there, has all decayed? Which crops worked well on that? Thanks in advance...
Thanks Romeo! I was actually thinking about making a video about this in the spring. Now I will for sure! Thanks for the suggestion.
Dr Elaine from the soil food web says it's best not to rotate crops so that the bacteria growing can specialize over time to best benefit the plants growing in the various areas therefore increasing plant health and decreasing pests due to healthier plants.
Great video again. Thank you to remind us all that!
I haven’t seen one of your vlogs in awhile. Good to see you again!
Thanks for all your common sense when it comes to gardening. I’m always seeking what’s most practical and time saving when it comes to this endeavor.
I have an unrelated question, however, if you or someone else could expand on.
I’ve heard a lot of sources warn against procuring spoiled hay from just anywhere. Do you derive yours from fields that employ organic practices, and if so is it hard to locate that material?
Cheers!
Great video! Thanks for sharing!
We are moving back to the city and will participate in a community garden, they use crop rotation and that is new to us (as we use permaculture methods and just plant things all mixed/ together and a lot like in your video’s), as we are new in the group/community we don’t feel like it’s our place to say their system of choice is nonsense 😂 but this video kind of sums up what I think about it. Maybe next year 😅 I do think it’s interesting to try out planting in this way, just to learn and understand different perspectives.
Maybe show this video around?
What about diseases such as tomato blight? Should certain disease prone plants be rotated?
On the topic of pests... My potato plants did wonderfully all summer then suddenly they all started to die back a bit earlier than I thought they should have. When I harvested the other day, I could barely find any potatoes. My first suspect is voles because I found some collapsed tunnels under the mulch in another bed and an ornamental grass in my neighbors bed had it's roots eaten off.
How do you keep burrowing pests out of a Ruth Stout bed?
Hi, I really love your videos on the Ruth Stout method! You definitely have the gift of teaching. I just put my hay down in Septimber of last year and it's now March. I have purchased some chicken manure to fertilize my garden with because I just started this method and my dirt is not rich enough to not fertilize yet. My question is do I remove the hay and put down the chicken manure and then put the hay back, or do I simply put the chicken manure on top of the hay and water it in?
Hey Scott, we haven't actually used any manure in our garden, so I can't speak from personal experience. However, I THINK it would be best to pull aside the hay first, unless it has already broken down almost completely. If you were to put it on top of a thick layer of hay, chances are some of it would eventually wash down into the soil with the water/rain. But it may take a while. Plus, burying the hay may actually promote the hay seeds (if there are any) to germinate, and that would be pretty undesirable. If anyone else has done this before, hopefully they can add reply as well.
Either way, please let us know how this method works out for you! I'm really glad that you've enjoyed our videos :)
Super, thank you guys 💚
Really great video. Thank you for the info and entertainment.
would love to see more videos from you
What about heavy feeding plants like tomatoes and peppers? Does decaying mulch really supply enough nutrients?
Ana primavesi, very respected organic soil scientist in brasil, shows in her most important book, how even with crop rotation, plantations have a gradual decline in productivity, although a much slower one. This may or may not be common knowledge in agronomic schools, for I am not an agronomist. Also, the hundreds of studies citated by her are from the 60s and 70s, and I have not read the most recent ones.
Well, even with all the composting, etc, there's still nutrient loss from leaching plus you can't really return all the nutrients back (unless you use human poop as manure).
Do you have a list of the books you have? I'd love to see that. 😊
But what about a crop like potatoes? Since the nematodes may built up in the soil? Don't you need to rotate them? Or does that not happen in the ruth stout method as you put the potatoes on top of the soil?
The importance of crop rotation increases with scale. The most important question is to ask "How many people do I need to produce food for?" (The second is "If I fail, can they get food from somewhere else?")
If the answer is less than 5 or so, crop rotation is probably not important. The more food you need to produce, the more you need to mitigate even the slightest risk.
Another way to look at it is that planning a good crop rotation is a professional skill. It's something you have to learn to do farming for a living (pun intended).
That being said a basic three to four year rotation isn't all that complicated. You'll have to track the type of plant you're growing, not the specific species. The four main types are root crops, beans and peas, brassicas, and alliums. Rotate those and you're well on the way. (In this rotation you'd sprinkle anything that didn't fit, like tomatoes, randomly.)
ps. If you want to see the best presented version of this, google "dig for victory leaflet no. 1".
Really cool brother
Thank you for sharing
Hope you have a great day
God bless you and your's
Just saying
Hi there,
When can we aspect a new vid? Missing the information presented in a almost soothing way.
Thanks Salvador!
I JUST posted another video :)
Great content thanks the myths about gardening.
Great video as always! Any idea, what cute animal ran through the background at 5:50? :D
I was just about to say that 😂
I'd say some kind of squirrel based on the movement.
I was wondering if anyone would comment about that little guy!
I also think it was a squirrel. So glad you all saw it. :)
I'd like to mention that this basic idea, especially allowing fallow times was mentioned in the Bible
Consider the possibility that crop rotation might be beneficial when growing some plants even if it doesn't matter for most crops. I would guess that Ruth Stout didn't replant tomatoes in the same spot every year. Thanks for the video.
Most back yard gardeners only have a few beds, or a small(ish) plot. I just don’t see the benefit of moving a crop 10 feet to the left. The bugs will still find them. The disease is still in the area. Better to keep feeding the soil and keep the plants happy. And have fun. Gardening may be a lot of work, but so rewarding too.
If and when you do get soil borne diseases, it’s crucial. So avoid, ’treat’ etc !
To be fair in the same Dowding book, he states that sowing seeds under specific lunar phases will have differing impacts on yield of said crop...which has never been demonstrated in real scientific studies....so there's that.
I hope this is so, because there's only one place in my yard where I can grow beans, so I don't have a choice.
Forgot to ask: did you plant your garlic yet?
Hard to take advice from a woman who can't spell "nonsense," but I get your point. ;'D
Thanks.
A lot of people do it because they have animals on the land. Having cows or pigs in the same place for too long may not be enough and you need to move the manure. Its smarter to rotate the crop and animals.
Well Derick to avoid pest and diseases in your garden you need good biology in your soil, it seems to me you are doing alright and are very productive.
For some further tips Please check the Soil Food Web by Dr Elaine Ingham.
Well, crop rotation isnt complete nonsense, it depends on the situation and the crop. It really doesnt have anything to do with gsrdening, but farming. There isnt any hypothesisng necessary, it is literally only applied to large farms where they have an interest in maximising the efficiency of both they're tons of fertiliser, and having a buffer against a poor season that would affect one crop differently from another, like tomatoes. Imagine that you had a cold and wet summer, you might lose most of your crop to blight. Now those same conditions are great for broccoli or other crops thst might allow you at least break even at the end of the year.
It was the backyard gardener with their relatively modest plots trying to emmulate the percieved success of large farms, adapting the wisdom to their endeavors with erroneous assumptions.
Your corn looks amazing this year! The scale most of us garden at is so much smaller than our ancestors, and the fact that we (hopefully) renew the soil with compost, mulch, etc., seems to make crop rotation unnecessary. Your point about moving crops in a small area to avoid pests also makes a lot of sense. My garden isn't large enough to keep the insects from walking the 40 feet to the new planting area. :)
Many people several hundred years ago followed the recommendations for farming in the Bible. The Bible recommended crop rotation. Mortgages used to be based on 7 yrs as recommended in the Bible. Today’s knowledge now better understands chemicals, soil structure, and life under the surface of the soil. Soil can be tested for deficiencies and corrected. Assuming hay is multi cultured it should have a little of every thing your soil needs. This doesn’t address pests and disease. If rotating helps you avoid disease and pests then I would choose rotation over pesticides, herbicides and disease fighting chemicals. But the choice belongs to each individual.
But I have lost my onions three years now dam worms. I am not going to grow them next year. It’s disheartening, (ya ya but they are my babies). I grow weird things for the fun of it not to see them die. If I put in 70 different crops I want results that I can eat and share. Just because. Even nematodes didn’t work. Changing raised beds didn’t work. I think they are everywhere, and the first year they were excellent. Reaped huge rewards. But not since. Any ideas?
Thanks for the info;)
Awe man. Too short.
Crop rotation is a complete waste of time for the gardener. We did it for years before we realized we were only parroting others. Since we stopped, our gardens have never done better. Most of our gardener friends think we're crazy, of course!
I agree crop rotation is mostly useless for small gardens, nature regularly grows even the same annuals in the same spot. As long as soil biology is high, crop rotation is pointless. Even large monoculture farms could probably do without if they used more biology friendly solutions like cover crops, grazing residuals, humic acid, etc.
Sorry, I cannot agree! I dig up and move my asparagus and rhubarb every year!!!
@@eb1684 wow, that’s extreme digging up perennials, I’ve never heard of that except for transplants. I’ve seen rhubarb thrive on even bad soil, year after year, it’s hardy.., Maybe you’re trolling😂
Plus asparagus needs to be long established to yield high, strange.
@@TheNewMediaoftheDawn Thanks' for the quick response! I was just kidding-That was taken out or Rush's book. Please read it-you will LOVE every word. What is trolling?
@@TheNewMediaoftheDawn How long is long?
I have read and watched videos. Crop rotations saves money by building healthy soil and organic matter. It acts as a great soil amendment without buying all those fertilizers. You plant a nitrogen fixator like a legume. Follow this up with a leafy green than needs nitrogen, then with a fruit (potatoes) that uses nutrients the leafy greens didn't use, then a root that the legumes, leafy greens, nor fruit used a lot of. This is a cheap way to build soil health and organic matter.
What about potatoes? I planted potatoes in the same spot one year, and in the 2nd year, my yield was poor.
Potatoes are heavy nutrient users, so I expect you'd have to heavily amend the soil after the season with a very thick layer of mulch. The weather also makes a big difference.
I have bean planting potatoes in the same spot for 5 years now. Potatoes are a heavy feeder, so you have to ad allot of mulch and maybe other fertilities each year.
I think it also depends on the pest pressure. I live in an area where potatoes are heavily grown in folks gardens, but my own weren’t in an area where any had grown before. I still ended up with more nasty potato grubs then I expected. I have a (currently small) market garden & a family garden, so I have plenty of room to rotate something else into that spot for a couple years, move the potatoes over, and let the buggers die off and get confused. Meanwhile, I’ll be leaving lots of other things in their spots - I usually rotate legumes and heavy nitrogen feeders so I don’t have to spend on nitrogen amendments.
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate your perspectives.
Tell this to the Allium Leaf Miners in my garlic bed 😒
alléluia....! 😃
you can't learn to do without trying. And with many things, you learn more from failures than successes.
Chipmunk at 5:51
👍
When so much of the soil is re-builded, they yeah no need of that. What I do is to use some compost and I dig a small hole, I place the roots of let say tomato transplant and fill the gap with compost. Minimal compost usage, soft of fresh soil every year.
In large scale gardens, they till, leave it uncovered. Contrary to Ruth Stout.
Wait...WAIT....WHAT ABOUT FUNGUS WHICH CAN HOLD OVER IN THE SOIL AND EFFECT NEXT YEARS CROP...ESPECIALLY IN SAME FAMILY...IE..TOMATOES, POTATOES...... I have never rotated in garden for nutrients ( compost , worm castings from worm farm, etc) but rotated to escape funguses.....mildews.....
Pests and disease arent as much of a issue for home gardener . Big mono farms are not only the same species .In most crops the plants are genetically identical . If a disease Can get hold of one plant they own them all
In the 1970s the wealthiest man in the USA his name was Richard Ludwig. Shakey's pizza the first big national chain was his hobby . He'd spend months making decisions on what toppings go on a new pizza.
He spent a afternoon developing a an . He had 2 giant pulp mills built on barges in Japan.
They were to big to fit in the panama canal and had to sail around the horn to get to south America. He'd bought a piece of land the size of Connecticut . He stripped the la d bare then he had trees planted fast growing hardwood . Well after a few years he got a disease. Normally a easy problem to fix but he'd planted the same tree and covered a area as big as Connecticut. Then it was a giant desert in the rainforest.
This was an interesting comment. Thanks!
Mysterious creature can be seen at 5m50s...
Monoculture:
“The solution is the problem.”
Dude went 'California hippie'. Lost independence to follow the herd.
Not growing anything on a given field to let it grow back to full health is a good idea, except doing it only once every 4 years is useless. People who actually did this type of rotation successfully in the middle ages did it this way : a given field only had crops once every 4 years so that the soil had 3 years to recover. Tilling is incredibly destructive to the soil, which is why it needs so long to recover. Nowadays tilling has brought many soils from 5 % organic matter content to 1%, especially in Europe... To grow back to full health, you would have to let the soil alone for decades...
Regarding rotation it's useless in living soil farming, IE with a soil always covered by cover crops, carbon based mulch or veggie crops. Because there is all the nutrients you want in the mulch or cover crop (if it's a good multi species cover crops). Another aspect that's been discovered is that phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are absolutely USELESS. First it's been discovered that the method for measuring those two elements only measured about a third of what was actually available to plants during their growing cycle... So we've been recommending fertilization based on false data. Second, in a living soil garden, plants get phosphore and potassium through mycorhizae and bacteria who attack rocks. There's plenty of it, you're never gonna run out of them. Than leaves nitrogen. We now know that you don't really need nitrogen fertilizer either because a living soil will produce plenty, as long as you don't use mineral nitrogen, which prevents plants from growing mycorhizae...
The idea that it's nonsense is nonsensical in and of itself.
People can smoke for years and never have a problem. Does that mean cigarettes are safe? Obviously not. Stout's assertion that it's nonsense, contrary to the preponderance of evidence that says otherwise, based on her claim that she has never needed it, is equally unfounded.
Crop rotation is not a panacea or guaranteed preventative. It's one of a grower's tools. Knowing why, when, and how to use it is important.
explain natural monocultures. there are thousands. explain Japanese rice monoculture paddy used uninterrupted for millennia.
As far as I was aware, true monocultures don't exist in nature. Can you give me some examples?
Rotate your black walnut tree to kill most things trying to grow!
#UltimateRotationHack
Lol
I hire a back hoe every year ($2000 per hour + tax) to rotate mine.
Wow! You must be rich. Who are your trees doing?
They all died-have no idea why. Must be "global warming"!
@@eb1684 I think it's a bigger flex to own your own 60 ton backhoe and you rotate your black walnut tree and your parents tree. But the backhoe is not to be used for anything else, and needs a sign that says, "For black walnut tree rotation schedule only!"