This will change how you garden, forever.
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- My two golden rules of gardening summarized. Many tips and strategies that play into these. Your entire focus in your garden needs to be on these 2 things. Not because I say so. Because that's how nature works - and nature has "growing stuff" on lockdown. We only need to learn by looking how nature grows things.
Home gardeners seek to emulate industrial agriculture practices in their garden. Why? Industrial agriculture has to make concessions in order to allow few people to tend massive acreages, and drive giant machines for harvest. We should not be seeking to mimic that in a home garden. The moment we do, we give up our biggest advantages. Yes, we home gardeners can have MASSIVE advantage over industrial agriculture. If you aren't taking advantage of that, then you are doing more work than you need to do, and creating problems that you don't need to be dealing with.
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New sub here. Mate! From The Weedy Garden in Australia I would just love to commend you on your storytelling of this life cycle. I’m working on an episode that tells this same story and it’s really nice to have my information confirmed. When I started gardening just over a year ago when the first lockdown started, this was the first thing and the only thing I needed to be able to see clearly to get the ball rolling. Once I understood that the soil is the stomach for plants, it changed my whole perspective. Thanks for sharing your understandings 🙏👍🏼👌💪🏻😃 David from Australia AKA Weedy
Oh wow, I'm so happy to have you here. David, you are actually my single favorite channel on all of CZcams (well, you, Edible Acres and Happen Films are all probably tied). You just started relatively recently, but your videos are probably the highest quality gardening videos anywhere. Thanks for stopping by. If I may be so bold as to recommend one of my videos for you to watch (it will definitely help your current project), check out this one on Soil microbiology - it's been very well received, even by some of my viewers who work directly in that field. czcams.com/video/LO-ostC1q-4/video.html
Wow, two CZcams greats. You both have great content!
Another shout out from Australia, huge fan of Weedy Garden videos are so beautiful. Just found this channel and loving it
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
@TheWeedyGarden
I feel so lucky to have come across David and Keith this week (David via Keith). I haven’t been able to garden for many years, but I’ll start again this year. I’ve been looking for the right approach. I now know that building a system for enriching our soil comes first, and then I can envision 2, maybe 3, swales on one side of our dry east-facing front yard. I’m thrilled to see that a simple way I can construct plant beds should fix this dry, nutrient poor area. I know I’ll eventually eliminate a lot of our lawn. It’s dry and weedy, but I couldn’t stomach using weed killer and fertilizer. Now I know what to do! Thank you for your incredible videos! Both of you are phenomenal educators and very talented at what you do. I’m inspired!
Weedy Garden !
This chap is a living legend
How fun would it be to have a show like Gordon Ramsey's "Kitchen Nightmares" but for gardens, and you just go around visiting people with struggling gardens and teach them what they're doing incorrectly and help them learn how to do it better. Maybe with a little less cursing than Gordon though cause you seem like a pretty chill dude.
That would be fun. I guess only problem is that it takes time. It's not like I can just slap 2 pieces of bread on someones face and call them an idiot sandwich, then fix their recipe and business in a day.
I have to tell them what works longterm, have them do tons of work, then say "just trust me, and I will see you in about 2 years". Lol
Part of this long term strategy stuff is that's exactly what it is... long term snowball. Nature is more patient than we are.
There is a British show. Monte Don is the gardeners name he has some books out too I have read not exactly permaculture but a plant show none the less.
Your passion is contagious. You're dialed in. It's not us that changes the garden, it's the garden that changes us.
100% !!! I am forever changed, right down to my core values and how I raise my children. I am not the same person I was even 5 years ago.
Gardening and permaculture is the best thing that ever happened to me, my family, even my extended family. We are all getting into it.
Yes! I'm watching this video totally dialed in. I can't wait to start this method of gardening 😊
This really was one of the best and most important Permaculture videos I've seen.
Thanks man, tell all yo frens
I know this is a late reply but I just saw your video. I have been trying to get a foothold in permaculture for my 1/4 acre lawn and there's just so much out there, it's alot to take in. You have literally just blown my mind with the truth about how plants are fed and how they don't mine nutrients from the soil! Thank you for the way you teach and explain things! You're a godsend!
Thanks! I hope this all helps :)
Game on! This is exciting. I am just discovering permaculture! It makes so much sense!
Welcome to the start of the rest of your life.
Same and he's the best teacher on youtube when it comes to permaculture...nobody else explains what there doing better than him....
🥰
This lesson just put me on my ear! I have a weedy garden and now I know why my plants are producing like crazy! How awesome! Thanks eh?!
“Never bare soil!” Love it 😍
I wonder if a gaggle of geese would see off that brush turkey. Great video, don't know how you did all that in one day. What a marathon.
Great video. I've been encouraging people to appreciate wild plants (weeds) for years & your video really nailed it ! These plants are super-important for the health of the soil, the wildlife (think pollinators et al here) & hence for us. Just because a plant has no known benefit does not mean it is worthless - nature is extremely powerful & everything has a role to play.
Awesome, good work 💪
so many weeds are actually edible and/or medicinal. nature is beautiful
Love your videos , your explanations are exactly what I am looking for - thank you so much
Most of this I knew. Some I did not know. How you break this down to a preschool level, I like that. Most gardeners on CZcams don't explain it in such simple terms and details. That's excellent cause not every viewer is gonna be an established gardener. It may be the very first time they've even heard of a nematode or mulch.
Also was drawn to what Paul said as we get older we don't want to work as hard. It's amazing how we as humans slowly start to breakdown as time goes by, this method of gardening actually gets stronger as time goes by. Proving as we decrease it increases, making work easier for us old folks and making it more abundant so we stay eating and just enjoy the garden.
People say this doesn't work. I say people are lazy natured and want instant success and gratification in the same day. It's not the garden who is failing. Truly I'm not growing the garden, the garden is actually growing me.
Totally agree. It's good to set up a self sufficient land design, so that it can grow as God intended. Nature already has all this figured out. Sometimes we just need to set it up and then stop mucking about and get out of out of way.
We can add fertility, but keep it as natural as possible. I'd rather shred leaves and refresh mulch, ajd take a sow long term soil building approach, and let all God's creatures, micro and macro, do the work. That's better than chemical fertilizers.
0:00@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy So well said - Dr Rosemary Mason and Dr Vandana Shiva are two of the most dedicated scientists, warriors in defence of maintaining the integrity of the soil, of making people aware of the grave peril we all are heading into, caused by those who are hellbent on demonizing Nature itself in order to control both it and humanity with your videos being also such an inspiring guide on how to ‘be’ during our time on this Earth, thank you
This changed the way that I garden more than anything I've watched. Thank you.
Awesome!
For those who want a more aesthetic look to the garden, as you've said, trim it out with something attractive, but also never plant one of a plant (except maybe a tree), but always a higher odd number, 3, 5, 7. They can alternate with an odd number of another plant or be attractively spaced out in the guild. This gives a garden a more finished look. I want three or more of the same variety of, say, tomatoes, for the look of it; the varieties don't all look enough alike for my picky ways.
It is nice to have a color scheme in each area if you have enough land to grow what you want that way. All white blossoms in an area are very cheering. A blue area, a purple area--really pretty. But I usually work some white in everywhere simply because it brightens up your spirits. So learn what color the blossoms will be on your tree and highlight that color around it, or use complimentary colors (opposites on the color wheel) like blue and orange. Red goes well with green leaves, and yellow and purple are great. You can also do blends, like red, orange, and yellow or other side by side colors on the rainbow. Red, purple, blue.
Your gardens have a nice shape, making for meandering paths around them. That's appealing. Pinterest has some pretty ideas for stepping stone paths; there is even one idea that includes flagstone mixed with sliced slabs of various sized trees (since we had some dead ones to cut down) with low lying crushable plants pushing up among them. Check out the pictures. And there are beautiful garden ideas, too, that can be incorporated with the permaculture effort.
This is such a good post and I wish I saw this when I got started. I have been leaning towards this kind of planting more as I go.
When I started I wanted diversity and I thought that meant no plant clumps. But having 3-4 elderberry here, 3-4 haskaps there, a section of strawberries there, its definitely not a bunch of monocultures lol. Monoculture is really like an ACRE of nothing else... not small patches.
When I plant out the lower area, its definitely going to be with more clumps here and there and less 1-ofs.
For the pathways, I'm definitely going to beautify some of my areas as time goes by. I added some edging logs in places and it makes it look so nice.
I think next season will be a 50-50 mix of effort split between planting the lower area and working on aethetics. Then likely I will be as big as I want this to be, and will focus on making a beautiful permaculture forest.
Great post, love it and totally agree.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I can't wait to see it develop! You really have worked and have the best of everything there.
So your daffodils, for example; have 3, 5, 7 clumps. Interspersed with 5, 7, 9 clumps of lillies. Or something that will come up as the daffodils are still there but fading. You can plan your perennials to come up one after the other and keep an area beautiful. Plan the area out as a time lapse... :D It's some planning work, but so much fun.
Indeed, exactly. I think once I get the lower area planted out in the bigger things (bushes and trees) I will likely exceed my yearly expenditure (depends on how many videos I can make in the winter time, any money from this channel goes straight into the soil). I would like to put another big order in at a fairly local nursery that specializes in native flowers. www.nativeplantnursery.ca/
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I don't mean to insinuate that you need more flowers. They're great, but the same principles apply with anything you plant; 3 looks better than 2 or 4. And 1 looks as if it were an accident. Just a design principle. And thank you for all I've learned from your videos; it has changed my life!
Yep. I would have managed my garden in a totally different way had I had this video when I started nearly a decade ago. For a time, I'm gardenless, but I'll be keeping these three commandments close in the future!
Bare soil is absolutely essential for some native bees. From Ontario, so it's not a question of different regions. I live an hour away. In fact, i don't see a lot of talk on this channel about supporting the native ecosystem. That's very unfortunate, in my opinion. Lots of talk about securing food sources due to climate change, but it won't matter if the local ecosystem collapses. Native insects drive the ecosystem. And native plants (and not dandelions and clover) and proper habitat (like the occasional bare soil) keeps native insects alive. We're not just in a climate crisis, we're also in a biodiversity crisis. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this matter.
Absolutely. This video is quite old, and everything in it is still relevant, but I have definitely created bare soil locations in my food forest since, specifically got ground nesting wild bees as you mention. You will see me mention this in many of my newer videos.
I really want to thank you for the education I've gotten through your channel throughout this pandemic. I don't have a food forest and I do like more of a traditional, "pretty" garden. However, I have begun to rethink a lot of my practices. For instance, chop and drop instead of simply pulling weeds. I've also bought a large bag of bio char from Airterra in Alberta(I think) and inoculated some of it to use in my garden. I've covered all my beds with (free!!) wood chip mulch and some cardboard. I've planted some comfrey to use as chop and drop and to makes into salves. And I've learned to use daikon radish (too late for this year, oh well) to break up my heavy clay soil. You really deserve one million subscribers for the education you provide.
By the way, my one ground cherry plant is still producing tons of delicious fruit, tasting nothing like the ones they sell in the store. I've just saved a ton of seeds from just a small handful of ripe berries to plant next year. It was the easiest thing I've ever grown. Try it
Thanks so much, very kind. We did have ground cherries this year, very tasty.
Make sure to innoculate your biochar before you put it into the ground. My biochar video (one of my first ever) has all the details at the end of it.
I just discovered this channel and have been working toward the concepts in this video. Chopping down large weeds and piled them in a compost heap, covered with grass clippings and wood chips from brush to later use in a vegetable garden. Also place grass clippings around vegetable plants as mulch and later till it in the soil, just skip the compost process. Planted fruit trees and dutch clover as a ground cover to recycle nutrients back for the trees. Working on getting blueberries and haskap established, and some flowers to take care of the honeybees placed on this land.. My neighbor don't get it, he sprays the grass along fences and later has a Canadian Thistle Forest, which is a bigger problem than cutting a little native grass.
I am very interested to know what variety of “ground cherry “ you are have good success with in your climate zone. Thanks!
The ones I grew were called "goldie"
Hey buddy, I didn't get it on video but yesterday my son and I were doing a trial of grass clippings and cardboard only cold compost and one of the bags of grass that I harvested from somebodies road side, it didn't have grass in it, it had what looked like the top 3 inches of forest floor. Instead of composting this material, I literally just spread it out on the south side of my house which is very shady, like a forest. Somebody took the time to bag up their forest (likely a lawn mower?) and put it in paper bags for me and I applied it to an area I'm trying to grow a food forest. You cannot make this up. I couldn't puchase a bag of forest even if I wanted to, and yet people throw this fertility away non-stop. How do we educate the masses? We need these topics to become mainstream.
Haha crazy! A permaculture friend of mine named Pierre (will do a video on his setup one day) has this great saying. He says that he used to be so frustrated and upset with the wasteful world we live in. But now he sees it as a great gift to him personally. People just want to throw away all their fertility, so "now I get to collect it from them". I think it's a nice silver lining type way to look at our current world.
I'm with you though. I would rather we wake people up and change the way we operate on this planet as the collective "apex species". We have the ability to do so much good, we need to want to, need the passion and purpose to act, but first we need to relearn what good looks like.
Part of that is reprogramming what we think we know. A lot of our actions are based off the industrial revolution and ways companies almost brainwashed us, so they could sell us more stuff and drive more profit.
Clover being taken out of grass seed mixes, so they could sell us fertilizer. That's an example. Raking up and bagging leaves so they can sell us leaf bags, and compost is another.
Someone bagging up old growth forest soil though? That's on a whole other level of cluelessness.
Part of me wants to educate the masses to stop wasting, part of me wants to educate the already educated about where to go pick up free fertility! :P
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I agree wholeheartedly. But I have a QUESTION: do I need to be concerned about the grass that is in with the leaves? I use to think like you both but after I heard you should not add grass to your compost or garden if it has been sprayed with weed and feed as it will hurt the soil biology and hamper the growth of plants. So I stopped gathering the bags from the roadside. I live in a housing development where just about everyone sprays their lawns for that pristine look and in the fall bags their leaves. So, before I knew this about being careful about using grass that has been sprayed I connected with a landscaping company that comes regularly in the area and as he was mowing and gathering all the leaves in his huge lawnmower, I said I’d be glad to have him dump the leaves on my property because I garden and I could use them and that way he doesn’t have to pay to get rid of them. So now I have this HUGE pile and don’t know if I can use the leaves because I dont know if the grass in the leaves was sprayed or not. What is your thoughts on this?
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I had trouble finding it, but bought a big bag of clover a couple of years ago and scattered it all over my back yard. It was my first attempt to attract bees and other pollinators to my vegetable garden. I love clover!
This is amazing....I've watched this 3 times...im excited for summer....
Same!
this guy sounds like me when i talk about plants gardens and biology in general.
Your soil looks much better than mine. I have way too much clay and potassium.
The solution is always 3 things: plants, mulch, and time.
This video really changed my mind on how I want to garden in the future. I was just getting ready to till an area!😮😬
Hello from Ottawa, I agree with everything you share with us, it makes perfect sense to work with Mother Nature and not against her, to support and create the healthiest foundation for growing everything possible. Thank you for sharing your knowledge it will improve the world one gardener at a time as they awaken to Nature’s natural way 🦋
Great crash course!! This is quickly becoming my favorite permaculture channel. And permaculture is my favorite subject, so...;)
Thanks! Permaculture is my favorite subject also 😍
That was really great - way to pull it all together for us! Especially the point about ‘weeds’ feeding the soil.
May I please ask questions? I’m totally on board and want to be a religious no-tiller. Until now, we’ve managed with sheet mulching and solarizing to create new beds from dense and diverse meadow and a gravel-laden field formerly used as a parking pad. Gross! But this year our goal is to grow ALOT more food so we have 5000sq ft of new growing space which we’ve had chickens building up for three years. I had hoped we’d have arable ground to work with but instead, it’s still silty clay (albeit lovingly filled with manure). The water wasn’t draining. Half was ok - and that’s where we planted a food forest, but we caved and tilled the half designated for food crops. We wouldn’t have been able to plant into it otherwise and hundreds of plants needed to go in the ground. Aside from covering the garden in wood chips and continuing to add organic material and rabbit manure throughout the summer, what else can we be doing to ensure we tenderize the silty clay and never till again?
Second (if that’s ok - I just know you’ll have ideas for us!), the fields are overrun with burdock and thistle which do have medicinal uses but there’s too much of it and they are avid spreaders and stick to the sheep’s wool and prickle their mouths - would you chop and drop them too? I have lifted many of them up with a fork and left them drying out in the field with their entire taproots exposed hoping they give up the ghost. Should I try to compost them? You’re probably gasping right now, but this is the reality of permaculture in non-ideal circumstances. I feel like I’m compromising so many of my permaculture principles!
I really appreciate the time it takes to reply. I promise I’ll do a garden tour video to share my newbie adventure with others.
For the first, Daikons. Daikon radish everywhere. (Buzz lightyear).
These things are the craziest natural soil busters on planet earth. They will break up and aerate your clay soils but do so in a non disruptive way.
You can eat some of the radish greens as food, but end of season you leave all the 2 foot long, 5 inch diameter turnips in the ground. These will be consumed by worms and turned into in situ worm castings. The holes they vacate will fill with life, but not 100%. Channels and groves from old roots will leave pathways for air and water and other plant roots to slowly take over.
For number 2, let me answer that separately
Canadian Permaculture Legacy I thank you!!! Daikon radish it is!!
For number 2, the burdock, etc... yeah I know they are a pain because of the burrs late season. But they are just so valuable for organic matter. I honestly see them as a gift not a problem. I have them everywhere myself.
The key to turning the relationship from hate to love is to keep an eye on them and watch for when they flower. Harvest them just before (if you to keep them), or after (if you want to slowly remove them). Never let them make seed (burrs) or you will get more. Never dig them, or you will get WAAAY more. You will never ever never ever NEVER EVER get every root fragment, and when you break them by digging them up, you just turned 1 plant into 5.
Them regrowing after a hard cut is honestly a gift though. You need to see the gift you have. And if you still want rid of them, then just keep harvesting them constantly and using their fertility as chop and drop fertilizer, or a free source of greens to combine with free browns in the fall (leaves) and make TONS of compost. Deep taproot plant nutrient heavy compost. Again, such a gift.
One last option... chop them and drop them literally in place. You can do this manually, or you can also just start mowing the field with a mulching blade. Just make sure you leave all the mulched cuttings down. This will build soil and turn the field into something burdock doesn't want to grow in any longer. And you will slowly transition your field from burdock to wildflowers.
Last tweak to this... mulch mow a row ahead of your chickens. Wait 2 days, and some soil MACRObiology will move in and start eating it. Now graze your chickens through that swath. Bam, free protein from a bug, slug, fly larvae, and worm fiesta. Let those ladies get some free meals, break any pest cycle at the larvae stage, and manure the laneway.
Then rotationally graze your whole field like this, 1 strip a week.
Modified option 2, run cows or larger animals 2 days before the chickens, let them eat and manure down. Then follow with the chickens who will pick and scratch and spread the horse manure and eat all fly larvae at the same time.
So many solutions! Let me know what way you are leaning.
Canadian Permaculture Legacy ok, that was like a whole magnificent uni course in one reply! Amazing! Your ideas combined will work perfectly: chop them and lay them down in the section the chickens will be moved to next and let it sit a few days - feed the soil, feed the birds, learn to love burdock and thistle. You’ve sold me! Thank you VERY much for taking time to craft such a helpful reply.
Thanks! I'm glad it was useful to you. I will pin this so more people can see this response. Hopefully a few people can get helped by it. All the best Angela, thanks as always for your amazing comments and feedback. It is so welcomed!
You should have millions of views
Thanks Gita 😊
This is in line with how i am planning my garden/food forest.
Mycorrhizal fungi are incredible contributors, but they aren't "mushrooms"
It's like calling all trees apples. Mushrooms are the fruits of some fungi.
Absolutely. Some of my older videos, I get some terminology mixed up, as I was really just getting into all this back then.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy
Didn't mean it as a call out either, just meant to spread accurate language.
Sorry if I came off as rude 😂
Why is this channel not popular?
You clearly haven't told enough people about it yet Yan! It's all your fault!
Seriously though, thanks for the compliment.
This will change everything. I hope. It won’t change the fact that I have 2 acres of wild blackberry canes ruining my gardening attempts but it certainly gives me the basic building blocks to make my lush food forest a reality.
Thank you
Greetings from Nova Scotia again! Great advice and essentially how I garden as well! To Canadian gardeners may I say that it is just about impossible to find a site that gives a Canadian climate perspective and so your site should be a Canadian’s go to site! Far too many gardening sites are Southern USA based and offer very poor advise as they do not relate to our ever returning harsh winters!
Thanks 😊
Cheers to that from interior BC
Awesome thanks
Hey thanks for another gem!
I'd love to add some subtitles to this (Russian and maybe Spanish) as you've literally just summarized 80% of what I've learnt about gardening and permaculture in the last 6 months, and I have friends and family that systematically violate these principles and fight against nature in their gardens and then unfortunately propagate damaging stereotypes like "It's too cold for things to grow well", "It's too hot", "we have poor soil here", "there's too many weeds to handle", "we need to retill every year to fluff up the soil and mix the nutrients", "fertilizer is too expensive" etc. And it's just because they don't know any better (because there's so much bad info out there!), and the more channels like yours we get from all different climates/circumstances demonstrating permaculture the faster we can change the tide towards restoring soil and fertility!
From what I understand you go CZcams studio -> Subtitles -> Community -> Turn on
No worries if you don't want to enable this yet, it just frustrates me seeing people feeding the vicious cycle of mine soil -> less fertile -> more work -> more cost -> less yield -> more pests -> less motivation to grow -> more spreading inaccurate rumours etc, and for the moment the best permaculture content is still mostly in English.
Thanks for this! I will go do it right away.
And you are right, humans are always about making excuses to justify their behaviour because changing is hard. And this is an area where it can be VERY hard to drive change... because it takes time faith to get there. Also, depending how far down the bad road you are, it can be very punishing at first.
But just thinking about it logically. The moment you actually understand how a plant TRULY works, and that it NEEDS soil life, then why on earth would you systematically kill it?
And when you think of how silly it is to remove biological material from a system... it just seems so common sense. We know these plants have "stuff" in them, so we know if we systemically extract "stuff" from our gardens, we will deplete soils. But we don't anyways because our grand daddy thought us this way, and that's how we does it.
Then combine that the fact that when you fertilize you get these immediate beneficial response. Now it's hard to convince a fertilizer addict that they are slowly killing their land. But ask yourself why farms last 50 to 100 years then get sold because they no longer grow food... we must change.
The best analogy I can think on the spot... imagine someone entering spring with no wood for their stove for the winter. You tell them each year to go plant some trees, but they say "they won't be ready for this winter", so they dont do it. Their perspective is 6 months from now, not 6 years, or 60 years from now.
Winter comes and they start chopping up books to burn for heat. Their daddy did it this way, and it gives all the heat you need.
Slowly after a few years, they have no books left, and have even started chopping furniture. They have no furniture left, and are now chopping the roof and walls down. Eventually the house is gone and they have to sell.
Instead of doing the longterm smart sustainable thing, they took the short term focus easy route, no matter the longterm cost. It just wasn't important at the time... not as important as getting heat right now from the dining room table.
Here is the link:
czcams.com/users/timedtext_cs_panel?c=UCfz0O9f_Ysivwz1CzEn4Wdw&tab=2
I hope this helps? I'm not sure how it works, but I think it requires manual input of subtitles. I'm more than happy turning it on. If people find value in this, then that is amazing. The more people I can reach the better.
If ANYONE does any work on this, please let me know. I will give you a special shoutout in some of my videos. I wish I could do more, but at the very least I can give you credit for any work you do.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy thanks! finally got around to it, apologies for the delay. I submitted some subtitles and I think you have to approve/review them before they appear. I used google translate for a mass translate and then cleaned up some words and grammar by hand. Don't worry about credit/shoutouts, I just want this info to reach more people :)
Okay I hit publish. If you do any more, make sure to let me know so I can turn them on. Thanks Ivan!
No, not overkill. Perfect and thorough. Helped to understand the diversity. I personally can't choose hardly any of same selection of plants. Listening from Florida.
Live your scientific approach… very refreshing. Great concepts, I learnt heaps.
I've been watching your channel for a few months now and I just saw this one. I've already shared it to others I know. Two family members say my gardens are a mess because there are plants everywhere. I hate to kill anything so my gardens look much like yours except no food is grown. I wish I would have done it differently now.
This is honestly one of my favorite videos. It's an older one, and I ramble a bit in it, but its a great video. I should almost redo it this season.
best education on gardening and soil ever
Weeds are our friends. However because we do not understand thier vital role we have made them our enemies. This video is golden and will make anyone a successful gardner.
great video !! I have been gardening for twenty years. thought I was getting pretty good. now I watched your vid. makes a lot of sense. thnx for shining the light!!
Cheers 🍻
So excited to discover your channel. This is an ideal video to share with my friends and family because it makes the case so clearly. Whenever I say the word permaculture their eyes get wary and they tune out. This on the other hand, gets right to the heart of the matter for any gardener and is thus a PERFECT gateway video to permaculture as a way of life.
Please do! That's awesome. I have an "essentials" playlist. Make sure to check that out first - unless of course you want more blog style "day in the life of" type videos.
I cut things like clover, dandelion, milk thistle, plantain, dock, lamb’s quarters and purslane to my rabbits then continually feed the manure directly. It doesn’t burn so quickens the pace of what you’re doing. I eat some of these same greens.
Another fantastic video full of info that I want to hear! It always felt wrong weeding the garden. Great to hear scientific facts to back that up. Thank you!
It's all about the science! Gardening can be a spiritual experience and that's great. But our actions should always have a solid fundamental reason behind them.
Stuff like how bad weeding can be is so weird when you first hear it, but it makes so much sense when you stop and think about it.
Most things we call weeds are spikey deep taproot ugly plants that grow in dead or recently disturbed soils. They germinate because this is the environment that they have an advantage in. Deep taproots access nutrient in dead land, and nitrogen fixing helps get nutrients in depleted soils. So when we disturb the soil by pulling plants out and tilling, we get MORE of those things.
Then we keep taking them away, and allt hat stuff has molecules and atoms in it. We systematically remove it and we deplete our soils further! We make weeds try even harder to heal the scab we keep picking!
And the solution is so easy. USE the weeds to BUILD fertility. The soil now becomes an environment they can't compete in anymore, so they stop germinating. Flowers and bushes can now outcompete them easy, so they sit dormant and wait for their time again. A trampling animal, a wind storm uprooting a tree and earth, a landslide, some kind of disturbance. So they sit and wait and no longer germinate.
Our goal with weeds is to use them, not discard them.
Important note: DO NOT put cut off grass too thick or too close to the plant because while it is green, composting might get to a high temperature and harm your plant.
studying permaculture for year and u just flipped my script.Most important video ever seen on topic.TU
Thank you so kindly.
Thank you very much for waking me up on growing food.
Yes, I did make all the mistakes you've mentioned here and I feel very dumb at this point.
You've totally changed my vision of growing.
Fantastic!
It is important to leave bare soil (unmulched) for our 100s of species of native bee species, many of which need bare soil for nesting
Definitely a good point. I believe I mention it in this video here: czcams.com/video/RGY8HLvZ00E/video.html
I’m not trying to dismiss your information or video (I just recently found your channel and am enjoying it immensely and have learned a few things) butttt… how do plants in completely dead soils (“conventional farms”) grow if there’s no microbial life left or very little? How does fertilizer (natural or synthetic of which I’m definitely not a fan) even work if this is true? I’m truly curious and would like if you could explain a bit more. This video actually blew my mind until I thought about this and am trying to figure it out. I hope you don’t take offense as non is intended. Thank you.
It's capillary action which drives the soluble fertilize up into the roots (essentially using surface tension and van-der-walls bonds). It's one of the reasons why almost all fertilizers are soluble, because there's no life in the soil to deal with insoluble fertilizer.
Hi from South Africa. Thank you for this video. We are literally taught in school that plants get nutrients from the soul through their roots and we need to remove weeds and we Must remove the roots or they will just grow back. Wow. I'm never pulling a weed again. I'll chop and drop rather. My question is, we don't have access to wood chips, would grass clippings be OK to use as a much instead, or will it "burn" the plants or rob the soil of nitrogen as it breaks down? I'm on a small holding(27 acres) and would love to turn my dad's vegetable garden into a food forest.
Grass clippings can be used, but I wouldn't just dump them on the area. They are quite high nitrogen at first, and they can also mat and block oxygen to the soil.
Instead, I would let them dry out in the field for a bit and turn brown. The nitrogen will offgas, and they will become more carbon dominated as they dry out. Then they will also be harder and will not clump and mat as much. I would then add them to the gardens or fruit trees at that point.
It is strange to hear a human making so much sense when it comes to Nature.
Lol
That's what the stereotype is: man versus nature, the never ending battle. As if we don't have a choice, as if it was an ingrained part of human nature to be idiotic. It's all tied up with manifest destiny and "civilization" versus "savages".
@@myronplatte8354man is nature, but the word nature others us and we think we are outside of nature. Everything on this planet is nature. The things we build are as natural as the ant hill. We're just a tad more fancy.
@@StayDownComeUp512 I actually disagree with that. But the nuance of why is super hard to describe without launching into a long lecture about patterning and stuff like that. Christopher Alexander convinced me.
@@myronplatte8354 if we all agreed life would be boring. I'll peep him.
A few months ago, I learned about agroforestry and weeds being biomass to feed my plants. But I was still at war with weeds pulling them out of the ground. After watching your video, it became crystal clear that I'm doing it wrong. My soil is still not optimal, I will use what I've learned here and start treating my small veggie garden more like a forest. Thank you for a very clear and informative video, subscribing!
Thanks! And who would have thought that the act of weeding can be so detrimental. It's not bad as long as we return those nutrients back to the soil from whence they came. Chop and drop, or compost and return the compost. But we need to be careful systematically mining our soils and keeping them in the depleted state that caused the weeds to grow in the first place! We will never escape if we do that, especially when it is combined with taking fruit or veg from that soil, consuming it, and pooping elsewhere (more systematic removal).
Some people will return those nutrients via humanure composting, but if that's not our thing, then we at least need to compost our weeds and return those back. Gain access to free nutrient such as woodchips, sawdust, leaves, etc and add those to the garden and return that fertility back. Then focus on growing as much solar panels to feed the soil life, so that they can extract maximum nutrients out of the minerals contained in the sand, silt, clay and soil aggregates.
So make sure we cut those weeds, leave the roots, but we also sow densely and put plants where the weeds are trying to come up. We can pick them, but all spaces should be filled with green.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy Excellent advice, thank you for taking the time to answer:)
I cut the weeds, chop and drop, and leave the roots alone, with few exceptions. The East Texas heat is so bad for bare soil!
Boy, did I have things backwards! Thanks for explaining that to us.
Awesome! Thanks for watching. Indeed, what the average person knows is just accurate enough to make sense, but it's the little things that matter. It's all about the soil life.
This video is really an eye opener for the new as well for the old one who is doing with out any understanding of the nature. Thank you for your hard work.
Thanks!
I never thought about unwanted plants this way, but that explains some of my problems perfectly 👍
I'm surprised that the video title became true for me. I'm now designing my yard with a whole new mindset. It seems so obvious once it's pointed out to you!
Wow!!!! Thank you
I felt already guilty that I cramped in too many plants in one spot, your video makes me feel better. So intuitively I probably did the right thing.
Yeah, it will all work out. The biggest problem you may have created is some hard pruning/thinning which will be great chop and drop material.
I'm from Malaysia, thank you
Welcome!
Maximizing Life & Maximizing Photosynthesis - The sun is the energy source, and increasing photosynthetic surface area is like putting energy into a flywheel... hard to start, but nearly impossible to stop once it’s gained momentum!
Exactly
You did change how I garden, thank you. 🐸
There's an exception to the "no bare soil rule, IMHO. If you have no bare soil, ground nesting bees and beneficial solitary ground nesting wasps won't be able to make nests in your habitat. Leaving some strategic bare spots allows that hard working garden team to set up house so they can go to work.
Edit: I hit subscribe button when "Thou shalt not perform f'kery on the soil" came up on my screen.
Lol.
Thanks for the bee comment. Unfortunately there is no shortage of bare soil on all my neighbors lots. Bees finding bare soil isn't a problem we have here.
Your viewers may be like me and surrounded by a sea of manicured lawns, so it's worth mentioning. Glad to hear your local ground nesting pollinators and beneficial predators have someplace to make themselves cozy :)
That's a good point. I will try to mention this sort of thing more often, thanks for the tips!
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I was going to mention the news that need bare soil.... Do mention this in future videos.
For sure
Thank you
🤯 I’m converted!
Haha good! Its both better and easier. :)
I never understood why people blow their grass clippings into the street. They're literally throwing away their land. So your video makes total sense to me. I'm going to see if it will work on Johnson Grass which is an invasive here in Texas. Thanks!
I believe in this 92%. The only caveats are how can I sow turnip seed in a clover field like that....also how do you find stuff when it all goes wild. ?
And if you think of all the work weeding....aren't you just going around your garden pulling up competing plants then chopping and dropping....it all seems like the same work.
Again I believe in this in orchards....berry orchards...perennials. I believe in guilds.
I'm just saying with a acre that I want to plant alot of carrots, turnips and beets I'm going around to every single vegetable and pulling away ground covers or competing plants for photosynthesis around every single carrot, beet, and turnip. ?
I can see this for almost every other vegetable....but what if you have huglekulters, and guilds etc with trees, berries, Broccoli....then all that us covered in minors lettuce.....how do I incorporate root crops in an large quantity? Make a bare spot then sow a seed? Then keep pushing back the ground cover that you know will spread in like 4 days....and doing that to 250 carrot spaces, 150 beets, and 250 turnips? That's more labor intensive then plucking the occasional weeds in a raised bed show case style bed with heavy mulch.
Thanks for your videos I think you are right in it all....but how would I sow and get 250 carrots out of a system like yours with out loosing it in the forrest and having it be labor intensive...and keeping track of it all. ?
Yes, it's hard when you make a high-level video like this, because there's always the opportunity to think of specific examples where this may break down. Nothing is 100% all benefits (or everyone would do it!), I just think the benefits far outweigh the consequences here, and that even the consequences are benefits in disguise. For example, the biggest problem with this system is definitely losing track of where everything is planted, missing harvests and having that food go to "waste".
I put "waste" in quotes because the waste here returns to the soil life to feed it, and that benefit is reaped by everything else that you will ever plant in that space. For example, have you heard of building soil with daikon radishes and then just never harvesting them? They are these MASSIVE white radishes. You can eat some greens, but the idea is that you leave them in the soil all winter long, and in the spring that entire mass has been turned to worm castings in-situ, and you now have a thriving worm population in your soil, building your soil. So, using that as an example, you can see how any carrots that you may lose is actually not a terrible thing. Sure you lose the carrots, but for the fraction of a penny that this carrot seed cost you, you instead purchased a few pounds of worm castings (for a fraction of a penny). Now go price out worm castings and see if that's a good tradeoff.
Okay, so that's great for building soil, but what if I actually want the carrots? What if I'm a carrot farm? Carrots themselves are a terrible crop to plant like this, just simply because of how fragile they are when they first come up. They do very very poorly around competition (which is funny because queen anne's lace (wild carrot) outcompetes almost anything else). So if I could think of a single crop that would challenge this model, it's carrots. So yes, still plant your carrots in your annual garden edges where you can tightly control nearby plants to allow the carrots to get going. I use a board to suppress growth, and check on it daily. Once I see the carrots germinate, I remove the board, and at least this way they start day 1 with no competition, and they can get up over some stuff. I then carefully weed around them. It's either that or no carrots.
For beets and turnips though, I absolutely grow them no problem under a carpet of clover. I just cut it to the ground when I sow, and do that once a week or so until I see the beets germinate. I honestly don't find it much work, but I'm also only doing my beets in a few 20 foot rows. If I was a full scale beet farmer would I do it that way? Likely not, I may instead use an annual for my cover cropping, to let the beets come up, and I would design my system in a way to minimize input/labour. For example, winter cowpea and winter rye. These will both die off in the spring. In the spring cut everything to the ground, sow beats.
Then for the groundcover in a situation like that, I would pick a super short groundcover. Here's my list of extremely short groundcovers to plant around things that are prone to getting swallowed up by other fast growing plants:
Chrysanthemum paludosum
Corethrogyne filaginifolia
Erigonum caespitosum
Euphorbia maculate
Fragaria virginiana
Festuca ovina
Horkelia parryi
Mondardella macrantha
Oenothera californica
Salvia sonomensis
Satureja douglasii
Sedum glaucophyllum
Heuchera hirsutissima
Juncus phaeocephalus
Nemophila maculata
Penstemon heterodoxus
Brilliant! Thank you for repeating a few basic principles so my brain can learn the concepts! Yay!
Excellent video! I love how you get to the point, and then elaborate, rather than leaving us to the end to find our what your 2 golden rules are. Also, thank you that you review the main points at the end of the video. This helps lock the lesson into our memories. Many Thanks !
Thats amazing , im not worry about weeding anymore . Thanks so much from New Zealand
Hi man! happy to hear your words and share feelings about soil life and the way of gardening, we are beings of the woods. beautiful food forest and thank you for all the content you share..
Love and Bless from Uruguay
Thank and right back at you :)
I was about to unsubscribe because yes, it does read like clickbait:) But I'm glad I watched, this has been very informative!
Cheers 🍻
Wow...I'm a few weeks into having a few rows of lettuce. I have mulch, but now I am so into shifting the rows into the polyculture packed unweeded thing! Gosh, you truly are helping change lives, and changing systems. Internationally! We're in NY, USA. Every Canadian I've ever met has been so nice.
Haha thanks. Good luck!
I really appreciate your explanation. It all makes sense for me now. I won’t be fighting weeds/unwanted plants anymore.
TY so much for pushing me into a higher level of gardening!
So nice of you, thanks. And good luck :)
Mulch is also a time released fertilizer and a fungal substrate.
Wow this is a whole different take on gardening and I am here for it!! 🙏
❤️
I agree with all of this except with some invasives. Careful with some because there are invasives that can root from any vegetative cutting and become more plants. Dog strangling vine doesn't but for example lamium leaves/stems will become more plants if you cut it off and lay it down. Always research a plant before removing it :)
I'm constantly fighting my strata and neighbours about bare soil. They are so anti-mulch and think my mulched garden looks '"messy". Ugh.
Definitely a great point. Any kind of vining plant especially, it will thoroughly love being chopped and dropped down so that it can spread. I've pulled off tomato suckers before and found that the sucker had rooted just lying on the top of the woodchips.
Hello from Malaysia! Great to know people that really care about the proper way to gardenin or farming! I will always support you!
Thanks for watching from across the world!
Thanks mate, I think that what you say is the go . It makes sense and feels good. Intuitive.
Well, this video certainly did change something for me. Since I'm learning all about soil life and started to build my garden I am more and more put off by the look of black compost just sitting there and waiting for plants to grow. That may be neat for someone but for me it's just useless space and resources. I can't stand the look of drying top layer of compost. Now I know what to do (and understand why ;)). Plus, I've heard that if there are no weeds around, pests will naturally feed of "our" plants that we planted. It all makes sense now.
Yeah, I just love the look of a green groundcover. Even if it stunted plants around it (and it doesn't), I would probably still do it, because it's just better for nature and looks awesome. One downside is that it can be really hard to find things that I've planted. That's a very real problem lol.
@@CanadianPermacultureLegacy I have a land which grew wild for around 12 years. At first I've started to think what I wanted to buy to make a garden lol. Then (this spring) I actually went there to explore what I already have. In some places I was for the first time since I moved here (3 years ago) lol. In summer it was too crowded I couldn't possibly go through all these trees. What I've realised is that I already have some plants that I wanted to buy. This land was at first even a little bit disgusting for me with all this wildlife, bugs and unknown plants touching me wherever I went. :D Now I see it is a real treasure. I just needed to get to know the plants around me to appreciate them.
I love the clover. I am using it to help rehabilitate the small plot of land I bought last January.
Awesome. I love clover so much.
You have changed my perceptions about weeds being the ‘enemy’ so l will resist the urge to ‘pull and drop’ so l won’t destroy the soil biome. Thank you for my on-going re eduction.
Wonderful! I think what helps is to learn more about the plants we are pulling also. Take photos and get them identified using stuff like google lens, picture this, plant net, etc. Then look them up on plants for a future at www.pfaf.org. Read up on their uses and such. I've befriended so many "weeds" as I just learned more about them. Stuff like queen anne's lace is a great example. Such a beneficial insect plant, and I used to pull them out. Same with lambs quarter. A terrible weed! Well, now it's maybe my favorite salad green, and super high in iron and protein. Purslane, a very delicious green - almost like a buttery lettuce.
Always a delight to run into a video that has a beautiful mind making my time so worth the watch.
Thank you kindly 🙏
Awesome vid bro!
❤️
Best explanation I have ever seen. All gardeners need to see
Thanks Eric
Lettus in rows or a bunch of Clover! But makes sense, been doing this forever due to lazy..
Ideally both with a trees and some bushes growing up out of the patch :)
That was awesome. Now I understand my mistakes and can go forward with more knowledge.
Permaculture is the way of nature. Thanks for ur great program.
Loved your video! It made me tie the knots with what I had previously watched on CZcams for many years. Thanks a million! 💝🙏🌈
Awesome!
Great channel. Thank you for not filling the time with nonsense.
Thanks. This is one of my earlier videos, and I think if I made it more recently, I could have trimmed it down to about 12 minutes or so. That being said, I just love this video for how amazing everything looks. The time of year when this was filmed is my favorite time of season here.
Another quality Vid....you supply us heathens with amazingly useful information, thanx for your time.
LOL cheers
Awesome info
Thank you
Love this all. Thank you for sharing you wisdom💝
Mind boggling and can feel the truths in what he says and is doing! I hope I can translate his info into my own desired planting situations! Thank you!!
Beautiful explanation im working on my permacultur feild. This is the great video
OH MY GOSH- My Grandmother said not to pull the weeds because you can never win, besides more weed seeds are constantly introduced in the flood irrigation water from the reservoir, including goat-head thorns!! Flood Irrigation is still available to some parts of the Intermountain West, (Utah & Idaho for sure, not sure where else) where it was first set up by the early pioneers & is continued to this day. She said to hoe the weeds which is cutting off the green tops and allowing them to fall to the ground and leave them them there. Chop & Drop is simply Hoeing by a New Name!!! ( I am OCD about pulling weeds. it just looks messy to leave all those dead leaves laying around. It even bothers me to watch you set them on the bark!!! I guess I didnt have enough bark in the garden last year. We ran out. Major reeducation is needed in my brain.)
Your grandmother sounds pretty awesome! :)
Great video
Thanks for the visit
Eye-opening! I'll try the "no f*ckery with the soil" approach in our vegetable garden next season. So far, we always tried to dig the weeds up, but they always come back. Let's see if I can just make them give up by cutting them off instead. Great video! Greetings from Austria 🙂
lol :)
Yes, it will take longer to deal with weeds in this way, but they are more likely to be gone forever, and you can use them for benefit (chop and drop) as they slowly give up. You can really build nice soil this way.
Wow this video blew my mind.
Interesting approach. I might have to make some patches following your rules just for comparison on how well it works. Thank you for taking the time to make this video.
Oooh science! Fun!
Wow….I learnt so much. Fantastic video 🇨🇦🐝
I think this is your best video! Inspired me to sheet mulch an area next to my food forest. I haven’t been planting dense enough and will be adding clover seeds around everything after work.
Thanks!