In today’s video I discuss some the ways in which people who grow food professionally start their gardens.
Some things I discuss: how to start a garden from scratch, how to turn over the soil, how to plow with a BCS, When to plow, how to start a no dig garden, how to start a no till garden, never till gardening, can you till before going no-till, mulching a garden, can you plant into compost, how professionals start gardens, using cover crops to start a garden, how to start a garden fast, how to start a garden right, etc..
Music: “Getting to Know” by Coffee and Cats
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50 Comments
Hey all – I usually try to take an hour or so on Mondays and answer everyone's comments but holy cow there are a lot of comments on this video already! I will try to get to more but I gotta get to work on the next video. Just know you all are awesome.
SOUTHLAND BAGEL! LEX KY represent!
Noice
Woderful!! very Informative content..I love Gardening too.. great to watch this video.. thanks for sharing..:)
THIS GUY!
Solid video Solid channel Solid advice
Still reference The Living Soil handbook
Great resource
Thanks!
I don't understand the no till method or if it's better than till.
growing at 8500' in Colorado, 20 years and loving it !!!
jesse
when discussing the slow method to prepare a future site, you say make sure you're using the correct cover crop. How do I know what that is? I have used buckwheat and winter rye but honestly not for a specific reason…little help?
thx
Subscribed because I'm in cybersecurity and call all of my friends nerds and noticed you call people nerds.
Excellent content. Thankful — soooooo thankful.
Awesome info.thanks
I always love to find new ideas and inspiration for future gardens and fields full of food! I like how this video is done.
Down in New Zealand and have autumn and winter to create the lasagna method in one area and the faster method in two others for my winter crops. Pea straw is really common here and then compost or veggie mix from the landscape supplies. We also have hens so they will have the job of turning over the new compost over the mulch that we can then use when it is ready
You should check and see if you can get cane straw that's waste after making sugar. It breaks down much easier than straw
No matter the amounts of views, I've found that you can always find different items that will give you a new outlook about doing gardening.
Sir, we must be prepared to accept the information to benefit from your videos!
Like I always said, ask a question 100 times until, the answer is understood by you!
Have a great 2023 season! TY.
Thanks!
I've found chopped straw is a great mulch anytime and you only need about 1/2" to be effective to cover bare soil. Just disappears into the soil and leaves the surface very light.
If u didnt digress… then I would be disappointed. INFACT … the thing I LOVE most is that u cant stay on topic… it adds a little "something something" to ur videos.. but I digress….
Thank you for this video! I'm in a neighborhood with HOA but I want to plant more flowers and vegetables in the backyard so summer will be less mowing which nobody in the family likes to do. I'm thinking that if we have more flower visitors and food in the backyard garden then we would spend more time outside and enjoy the beauty of nature plus we can eat healthy food. Thinking about it with the vision of how I want it to look after is very encouraging but the planning part of how it's done is overwhelming. Kids don't want to help and if they do then it's more work for me to do later. Husband is not into gardening also so most of the work will be on me. I like the fast method with cardboard and compost. I might be able to do it this year hopefully. I'm thinking of using soil conditioner on top of the cardboard just to kill the grass and work slowly of what I can do next to start planting with compost from the garden store. Again, thank you!! ❤️🙏
These methods might be ok for very small gardens but what should a person do if you have 5 or 10 acres. Not sure where to find a tarp that big. I plan on growing sweet corn and potatoes that will be seeded and harvested with a tractor. Would like to be minimum till for sure.
Probably try your methods for tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, etc
Well i found a great spot for a no-till garden, inside a fully climate controlled greenhouse with co2 tanks and lighting
I'm in E TN with a west facing VERY steep slope, heavy, heavily compacted (new construction) CLAY soil. I think I'll do a combo of terrace + raised beds, with the sides of the bed coming out to make a somewhat level surface, and an attempt to create a level walking surface in front of the beds. I'm in an HOA where we can't have chickens, or get rid of the lawn or even have a clothesline! So I have to be stealthy about how I go about my terraces 😉
Moving away from heavy rototilling. Listening to you Farmer Jesse is great and you sure are awesome!!!! Making compost and have garden divided in to 6, 4*12 ft beds,plus few larger areas. Bought my first broadfork this winter and excited to see how compacted the soil is.. thanks for your inspiration!
I actually mixed compost ,leaf mold and top soil from the forest in 6 huge raised beds. This will be my first time planting in this. Worked pretty good in the one bed I used last year. I also used alfalfa hay to mulch with.
You are the Paul Rudd of the mud.
U never explained what to.do.with the cover crop. Do i chop and drop? Do i pull everything out and then plant in the soil? Or do i flip the civer crop upside down and then plant several months later? No idea….
Great video. I also live in Zone 6B but in Idaho! I would love to get rid of entire front lawn but we have an underground automatic pop up sprinkler system so I don't know how we could till without ruining all the lines. Any advice?
Superb Video!! Thank you so much for sharing. You are a wealth of Garden knowledge.
Coleman Shepard told me a method i'm going to try. he instructed me to mix a cup of molasses and a tablespoon of sea salt in a gallon of water (you might want to double or triple the recipe) spray that all over the grass that's growing where you want your garden to be, give it a good dousing. the tarp with an old bill board tarp (black backed tarps are best for this) leave it covered for 3 weeks to a month, when you remove your tarp all that will remain is mycelium; you can plant into that or spread a mulch and plant thru that.
Can eucalyptus leaves be used as a layer? I've heard they are toxic to some plants
Excellent!
>never till wet soil
Here in Western Washington, our soil isn't dry til July.
loved your explanations!
I have a 860 sqms garden in rural Hungary with a small country house on the property. I bought it in July 2021. The garden was not used for years, it was full of small acacia trees and huge grass. We cleaned it and I got a quite big compost pile from the greens what I used as mulch last year.
What about doing an off season controlled burn on top of the area to be planted?
Thank you for being realistic about the need to till/plow native soil in order to break ground for an ideal initial planting site. No-till is a conservation practice; not a "how-to-get-started growing" practice.
Ao much ugly plastic… very sad
I have found that Charles Dowding's oft used quote " One year's digging, 7 years weeding" to be basically true. That I've regretted starting a new garden by plowing & tilling. Granted, I'd also been too impatient and having not enough dry spring weather, and on clay-ey soils usually, so, made myself worse problems in general from that too (… it was before I knew much about all that 😁). But I have had great going on any most kind of soil using very minimal compost and which wasn't exactly true compost ( everything from too-sandy of, and containing some fresher cow-pies than it twas advertised as, cowyard dirt to some soil from behind the house where the previous owner had dumped fall leaves for years). It just depends on the thing. It was also suddenly hot n sunny and already getting into June the one time ( had moved in in early May) so I found I needed to have mulched my beets and carrots a lot more immediately than I did… the beets recovered pretty well though. I didn't plant everything, like broccoli cuz I have little experience with it or peas cuz too late, and the tomatoes were in a spot that turned out to be extra compacted and sour…and I didn't have a broadfork or anything at the time. Everything else did from fine to great ! And I'd used MINIMAL compost ( this was the time it was from the old leaf-pile area, but that had been years ago by then, and there was a lot of weeds n stuff in what my hubby brought up to me w the tractor…I just plucked out the obvious weeds and quack grass and made it work ! I am a Christian and do pray over my garden, so, I'm sure God did unknown amount of blessing this/it/us …). I had just a big handful or 2 for each corn plant ( it was Green Oaxacan, & my 1st time w it), on top of where I'd had the most decent cardboard layer on the lawn, and I was worried it wouldn't break down fast enough, let the roots through and that all my corn would fall over in the wind. I wouldn't risk it again, cuz some of that cardboard was really tough, but shockingly it handled storms etc. fine all season. I love that corn variety !!! The birds love it too, as you're trying to let it ripen fully …. be advised ;). Beans, squash, peppers, cukes, all did super well too. Tomatoes had issues but we still made out ok. Potatoes were where someone had tilled the previous year or 2, & though they looked good, they didn't produce well and I think it may have been due to them being way more shaded than I'd predicted, by some trees & shrubs to the north and west sides of them. Plus something started eaten em in the ground right away that fall, too. I'd never really dealt with that b4, I grew up leaving potatoes until the plants were totally dead & dry.
I did another new garden last spring, totally no-till but this time I had a broadfork, and it needed it ! Concrete-like sand with narry a sign of soil life in sight ! This was the time I got the cowyard dirt which turned out to be too sandy, not much for spilled hay or anything decomposed in it like I was hoping… ( it was from an OG-practice farm, and being new to the area, I don't know what else I coulda got without risking persistent herbicides, anyways). It was also nearly a record dry summer here, so I did have to water a lot more than I usually do, which is as little as possible. I'd used the contractors paper this time ( finally found out what that is and where to find it ! ) on about half, and black plastic on some, and nothing but mounded cow-yard-dirt rows for the potatoes, soon mulched over and between with hay and later more in between as needed ( where I'd skimped w the hay), woodchips I'd finally gotten more of. Paid too much for a little load early on, finally found some free, later. It was full of green twig chips and leaves and smelled fantastic ! Pulled back plastic except under the big squash plants and mulched with it. Again, not everything was great, mainly because I'd moved in May again ( 😕) and it was too hot by the time I'd sorted everything and tried carrots ( the ones in the pots under dappled share did ok though). Everything else did well to REALLY well, to superb ! Everything but the potatoes and tomatoes had again, quite minimal compost and not all of it – by any means – ended up on a board forked area and it ALL needed it. Always put your squash on your worst area. Just give it that decent hold, a few handfuls of compost,( I add a handful of tobacco to deter pests for my squashes & cukes, it works), and mulch the hole a bit but not too-up-against the stem of course. Cover the area in plastic or, preferably, woodchips or grass clippings, whatever. By next year you may be able to grow other things there.
What I grew & a 1 to 5 of how well it did. (The peppers, some tomatoes and 1 of the Cantaloupe I'd bought, rest I started myself). The hot, dry year stressed some things, esp. those on and next to the black plastic when I wasn't watering much yet, trying to wait for rain a little, like I normally do… .
Cucumbers : 5
Tomatoes: 4-5
Peppers : 5 (!!!)
Golden Bantam HL corn : 3 ( I think I waited too long to get watering it more, lotta the cobs were devoid of normal kernals).
Beets : 5
Broccoli: 3
Pole Beans : 4
Winter squash : 4
Pumpkins ( Lady Godiva) : 5
Potatoes : 4
Green onions : 3
Cilantro, dill, sage : 5, 3, 5
Summ. squash : 5 🙂
Lettuce : 2 ( struggled w conditions all summer then my fault w a water catastrophe and other issues all fall)
Swiss Chard : 4 – 5
Cabbage : 1 ( tried a fall crop, just never took off. Was out of room except for the most unimproved spots).
Kohlrabi : 3
Radishes : 4
Tobacco: 4 ( " Native" variety, from Pinetree. Tryin to grow my own for the above use 🙂 )
Watermelon: 5
Cantaloupe : 5 and then some. Did ya know you can freeze it ? I dislike it, plant it for hubby, but I LOVE it in a smoothie, fresh or cubed and frozen, with some orange juice ( I used a few spoonfuls of concentrate) and a milk or yogurt ( & I add a splash of vanilla 🙂 ) !!!!
– I'd grown Mn Midget from seed, and bought a Hale's best. This yr I'm tryin these and am SO excited : Petit Gris de Rennes & Emerald Gem. ( !!!!). I'd used a low trellis btw, and places fruits on the ground on bricks I had. Helped a LOT to prevent rot.
So, maybe not a lot of the usual popular market veg., but still a lot of food !!
I agree about the dogma, one's context and everything else you're sayin ! Just sharing what worked for me… .
When NOT using it as a layer in lasagna gardening ( which I've also never done), I prefer hay to straw. I've always had way more issues w straw : from a nice, thick crop of wheat or oats coming up in it, to it seeming to make for more slug issues than other mulches/than hay or grass ( but I'm not sure), to it letting more light down through, compared to a comparable amount of hay or grass, it seems. I have not seemed to have had issues with weeds from using hay or grass clippings, I was very surprised about that with the latter. I have most often been blessed to have had actual alfalfa hay, so, very little weeds in it anyways ( & I was able to know it was OG or no persistent herbicides had been used), but I've also used very grassy and even slightly weedy hays ( mostly pre-seed-head weeds but not totally). It seems to not be much of an issue when keeping it mulched deeply enough, or something… . IDK, I've often not had it all THAT deep, once it settled or the worms had been eating it up, yet the only issue I had was grasses and dandelions coming up through the cracks or thin spots, from the former lawn below ( It was clear it had been already there).
compost at that amounts gets kinda spendy in my area.
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From the Philippines. Thanks!
@1:12—I swear I could smell dirt. And it was good 😊
Goddamn you talk too much
So last winter we had temps down to 5F. As it approached a placed wheat straw on my onions to try and protect from the freeze. A few wet later I had a lovely crop of wheat sprouting in my onion rows. It was very time consuming to pull the sprouts. So I won’t do that again. An hay would have weed seed, so maybe use pine straw?
Power Plants 😅 @ 18:03
its everything that you can tell about gardening, thank you for such good explanation, when you talk about cover cropping which i the best option for spring and autumn cover cropping cases ? regards for good job
Does mulch count as compost if you’re willing to wait a year? I was surprised you didn’t say to use any other amendments like manure or coal
I had a newngarden area picked on when we moved to new home. The soil is clay, so I layed dark tarps down at end of summer, left on til spring. I applied compost and mulch, and used raised beds for some crops and planted directly into soil for others. It worked great! I continue to add leaf mold to level.area and the soil is much improved.